








-1°,^ 



■^^ 











1': \,^' ;«^'» X.^^^ /J 















O' c 











*" . 


















" • ♦ '^ 















° .^^^'V. 






WILD LIFE CONSERVATION IN THEORY 
AND PRACTICE 




o 

u 

a> 

■4-> 

Xi 



J4 
O 

oT 

he 

a 






y bD 
3 G 

2 § 



WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 
IN THEORY AND PRACTICE 



LECTURES DELIVERED BEFORE THE FOREST 

SCHOOL OF YALE UNIVERSITY 

1914 



By 
WILLIAM T. HORN AD AY, Sc.D. 

Author of "The American Natural History,'''' 
"Our Vanishing Wild Life" etc.; 
Ex-President of the Ameri- 
can Bison Society 

WITH A CHAPTER ON 

PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES 

By FREDERIC C. WALCOTT 




New Haven: Yale University Press 

London: Humphrey Milford 

Oxford University Press 

MDCCCCXIV 






Copyright, 1914 

BY 

Yale University Press 



First printed November, 1914, 2000 copies 



21 I9H 

©CI.A387662 



PREFACE 

If it is worth while to preserve the wild life of 
our country, and of the world at large, then it is 
the duty of the university educators of America to 
take up their share of the white man's burden. 
The training of a grand army of embryologists and 
morphologists is all very well; but what about 
saving from annihilation the species that our zoolo- 
gists are studying? Which is the more important: 
the saving of the pinnated grouse from extermina- 
tion, or studying the embryology of a clutch of 
grouse eggs? 

What is needed — and now demanded — of pro- 
fessors and teachers in all our universities, colleges, 
normal schools and high schools is vigorous and 
persistent teaching of the ways and means that can 
successfully be employed in the wholesale manu- 
facture of public sentiment in behalf of the rational 
and effective protection of wild life. 

Thus far the educators of this country as a class 
and a mass have not done a hundredth part of their 
duty toward the wild life of the United States and 
Alaska. Let him who doubts this very sweeping 
statement ask the next young university or college 
graduate that he meets how much he has learned in 
his university about the practical business of pro- 



VI 



PREFACE 



tecting wild life. Let every graduate ask himself 
how much he has learned in the classroom of this 
highly important branch of zoological work. 

The course of lectures now published in this 
volume represents the awakening of Yale Univer- 
sity, through the efforts of Professor James W. 
Toumey, Dean of the Forestry School. The 
publication of this volume by the University Press 
may well be accepted as a contribution to a cause. 
It is hoped by those who have made possible this 
lecture course and this volume that this presenta- 
tion may arouse other educators in our great insti- 
tutions of learning to take up their shares of the 
common burden of conserving our wild life from 
the destructive forces that so long have been bear- 
ing very heavily upon it. It is not right that this 
enormous task should be left to a few toilers — 
and fighters — merely because they have, as a matter 
of conscience, dedicated themselves to this work. 

W. T. H. 

University Heights, 

New York City, August 15, 1914. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface v 

Chapter I. The Extinction and Preservation of 

Valuable Wild Life 1 

Chapter II. The Economic Value of Our Birds . 44 

Chapter III. The Legitimate Use of Game Birds 

and Mammals 84 

Chapter IV. Animal Pests and Their Rational 

Treatment 123 

Chapter V. The Duty and Power of the Citizen in 

Wild Life Protection 161 



Frederic C. Walcott 
Chapter VI. Private Game Preserves as Factors in 

Conservation 195 

A Bibliography of More Recent Works on Wild 
Birds, with Special Reference to Game Preserves 
and the Protection and Propagation of Game . 223 

Index 231 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

A Lesson in Bird Protection ...... Frontispiece^'^ 

Facing Page 

The Kind of Deer-Hunting That Means Extermination 28,^ 

Quail Slaughter in Texas, According to Law . . 5Q ^ 

Ptarmigan Slaughter in the Absence of Law ... 80 v-^ 

Wild-Fowl Extermination According to Law, by 

**PuMp" Guns 98 ^^^ 

The White-Tailed Deer as a Food Supply .... 114i^ 

Alaska, Any Year 164 v'^ 

Result of a Few Hours' Trout Fishing near Spokane, 

Wash 188 ^-^ 

CHAPTER VL 
A Group of Deer Frontispiece ■■' 

Facing Page 

Feeding the Wild Geese 198 

Five O'Clock P. M 204 

Winter Quarters 208 

By the Brook's Edge 212' 

The Home Pond 218 



CHAPTER I 

THE EXTINCTION AND PRESERVATION OF 
VALUABLE WILD LIFE 

The industrial development of the United States 
has wrought so many sweeping changes from con- 
ditions of the past that the American people now 
are fairly compelled to adjust their minds in con- 
formity with the new conditions. Forty years ago, 
the preservation of wild life was regarded chiefly as 
a sentimental cause, of practical interest to sports- 
men only. To-day, that cause is not only acutely 
sentimental, but it has also become intensely prac- 
tical to millions of American producers and con- 
sumers. To-day it affects the lumber-pile, the 
market-basket and the dinner-pail, and is of such 
practical importance that it demands the attention 
of the public at large. A few months ago, on the 
floor of the United States Senate, Senator Gallin- 
ger declared that it is worthy of the serious atten- 
tion of every man in public life. It is because of our 
former destructiveness that we now feel the lash of 
necessity, and are compelled to conserve, whether 
we will or not. 

We will endeavor to present a general view of 
the present status of the wild life of North America, 



2 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

its practical value to us, and our duty toward it. 
The time has arrived for the consideration of a 
number of important practical questions. The 
amount of exact zoological knowledge that has been 
accumulated in our libraries and museums is enor- 
mous. A vast amount of that knowledge is as yet 
undigested, and much of it seems useless. The 
academic cabinet naturalist has his place in nature, 
but the need of the hour is for the economic zoolo- 
gist, who can help the producer of crops and the 
consumer of products to combat the insect world 
and reduce the appalling cost of living. On this 
point I feel so strongly that perhaps I am in danger 
of becoming tiresomely practical; but those who 
look most deeply into our annual losses in cereal 
crops, fruit, forests and timber will appreciate my 
point of view. 

We will endeavor to avoid the discussion of aca- 
demic questions, because the business of conserva- 
tion is replete with urgent practical demands. It 
is my desire to offer to the Yale Forest School a 
foundation on which may be erected a structure of 
useful knowledge pertaining to the extermination 
and preservation of the wild life of North America. 

To-day it is the way of the world to expect the 
man who has been educated in a great university to 
be an encyclopaedia of information, and a very 
present help in time of trouble. Especially is this 
the case in matters pertaining to conservation. 
Noblesse oblige! The graduates of the forestry 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 3 

schools of the United States will be appealed to, 
not only for information regarding reforestation, 
and the insects so destructive to trees, but they will 
also be called upon to say which species of hawks 
and owls should be killed, and why; whether all 
skunks have hydrophobia, and how the gray wolf 
population may really be reduced. Even yet, 
wherever large forests remain, there will some 
remnants of our former abundance of wild life be 
found. This being the case, it is easily concluded 
that the men who have to deal with our forests 
should entertain toward birds, mammals, reptiles 
and fishes a degree of interest and sympathy that 
will be manifested in practical protection. We hold 
that toward our remnant of wild life, every forest 
ranger, every teacher of forestry and every intelli- 
gent American in general, has a solemn duty which 
no conscientious man can evade. 

The Balance of Animate Nature is a subject so 
well understood by every thoughtful student that 
it is unnecessary to dwell upon it in detail. To the 
field naturalist, and the explorer who visits un- 
spoiled lands, it is a subject full of entertainment 
and delight. In our boyhood days, that is to say 
about forty years ago, when birds were abundant 
all over the United States, not even excepting the 
arboreal deserts, the birds devoured the noxious 
insects, the hawks and owls devoured the undesired 
increase of wild rats and mice, and the owls, foxes 
and lynxes reduced the surplus rabbits. Any 



4 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

undesirable increment in wild life was promptly 
eaten by its natural enemies; and predatory man, 
both tame and wild, kept down what might other- 
wise have been a surplus of bears, foxes, lynxes and 
other carnivorous animals by trapping them for 
their fur. 

Forty years ago, the sprajang of fruit-trees and 
shade-trees was almost unknown. The only insect 
enemies of the western farmer and fruit-grower 
were the grasshopper, tent-caterpillar, the potato- 
beetle, and at long intervals, the chinch-bug of the 
wheat-fields. Even after the advent of the Colo- 
rado potato-beetle, their black and yellow stripes 
were so attractive to the rose-breasted grosbeaks 
that in many localities there were not enough of the 
beetles to supply the popular demand. 

To-day, the farmers, fruit-growers and foresters 
of the United States are engaged in a hand-to-hand 
struggle with great armies of destroying insects. 
It seems as if every bush and tree, and every vege- 
table, fruit and farm crop has its own special insect 
plague. Between $7,000,000 and $8,000,000 are 
expended annually, and in one sense utterly lost, in 
spraying-machines, poison solutions and labor in 
fighting insect pests. 

For forty years we have been, as a people, crimi- 
nally destructive of valuable wild life. Now we are 
paying for the follies of the past. The most foolish 
of all men is he who needlessly quarrels with a good 
friend or destroys a valuable ally. Our treatment 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 5 

of our feathered friends, right down to the present 
hour, is a painful subject; but we must face our 
own public record and answer to the charges 
against us. 

Whenever man upsets the balance of nature, 
that moment he begins, in one form or another, to 
suffer for it and to pay. When the foolish farmers 
of Pennsylvania demanded and received at Harris- 
burg a law placing bounties on the heads of 
slaughtered hawks and owls, by the end of two years 
those farmers found their fields so overrun by wild 
rats and mice that they clamored for the quick 
repeal of the bounty law. Through their losses 
they learned to appreciate the value of certain 
hawks and owls as destroyers of noxious rodents. 

In 1908, we mentioned the fact that during the 
previous ten years the woodpeckers of the New 
York Zoological Park had decreased about 90 per 
cent. In 1912, we noted with sorrow the appear- 
ance of the terrible hickory-bark borer, and since 
that time fully 50 per cent of our hickory trees have 
been destroyed by that pest. Possibly these two 
facts are unrelated ; but to me their coincidence has 
a sinister aspect. 

It is unfortunate that while so many observations 
have been made on the anatomy and classification 
of our wild creatures, more attention has not been 
paid to their habits and interrelations. The manner 
in which the lives and habits of our wild allies and 
foes dovetail together is too little known, and needs 



6 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

to be more seriously studied. It is well that the 
entomologists are doing their utmost to find para- 
sitic insects that may prey upon the insect species 
that are so destructive to forests and to crops. 

The appalling destruction of wild life that for 
forty years we have been witnessing on every hand 
is chargeable to greed, slothfulness and ignorance. 
The same low order of intelligence that denuded 
China of her forests, and turned her hillsides into 
gullied barrenness, has swept away fully 95 per 
cent of the birds and mammals of America that 
were most useful to man. Had the game-birds and 
game-quadrupeds of the United States been prop- 
erly and conscientiously conserved from the 
beginning until now, the wild buffalo, elk, deer, 
turkey, grouse of various species, ducks and geese 
would to-day be yielding to us each year $10,000,- 
000 worth of good food that had cost only half a 
million dollars for warden services to manage it and 
protect it from unlawful killing. 

The destruction and preservation of our wild 
life has now progressed so far that we can view the 
future with the lamp of experience. With the past 
spread out before us like a map, we can see when 
and wherein we have erred, and we can also measure 
the practical results of some of our own toil in the 
field of wild-life conservation. We now are able, 
with the aid of a little logic, to draw a few con- 
clusions so correct that they are as firmly fixed as 
the foundations of the Rocky Mountains. Regard- 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 7 

ing scores of matters that once were questions, and 
therefore debatable, we now can say that we know! 
It is on the use that we make of our knowledge of 
existing facts that the future of the wild life of 
America now depends. 

Owing to the sweeping changes that have come 
upon our wild life during the last twenty years, the 
young student of to-day needs to be told something 
of the wild life of the past. 

Concerning the former abundance of animal life, 
a knowledge of the past always gives hope for the 
future. One of the great natural wonders of the 
continent of North America, as it came to man 
from the hand of Nature, was the marvelous variety 
and abundance of its wild life. Abundance is the 
only word with which to describe the original 
supply of animal life that stocked our country only 
a short half century ago. Throughout every state, 
on every shore-line, in all the millions of fresh- water 
lakes, ponds and rivers, on every mountain range, 
in every forest, — aye, even in every desert, — the 
wild flocks and herds held sway. It was impossible 
to go beyond the haunts of civilized man and escape 
them. 

The value of the wild life of North America is 
a subject by itself, which gradually will be devel- 
oped. In order to become successful conservers of 
the remnant of that wild life, it is indispensable 
that we should know in brief the sad story of its 
past. Patrick Henry spoke wisely when he said. 



8 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

"I know no way of judging the future but by the 
past." To-day the question is, Shall we sensibly 
apply the lessons of the past to the problems of 
to-day? 

It is natural for man to believe that the resources 
of nature are inexhaustible. The wish is father to 
the thought. The theory is comforting, because it 
helps to salve the conscience of the man who com- 
mits high crimes against wild beasts, and birds and 
forests. 

In the days of buffalo abundance, the Cree 
Indians firmly believed that the buffalo herds issued 
from a great cavern in the earth, and that the 
supply was quite inexhaustible. The greedy and 
merciless white buffalo-hunter was so busy with 
slaughter that he never troubled himself to think 
about the source of the buffalo supply, or its prob- 
able continuance. He said, over and over, "There 
will always be plenty of buffalo!" 

And yet, four years of slaughter, in the early 
seventies, wiped out the millions of the great 
southern bison herd; and just ten years later 
another four years of hide-hunting exterminated 
the northern herd. Such was the fate of the most 
numerous, the most conspicuous and most valuable 
land animal of North America, and the one whose 
millions were rivaled only by those of the barren- 
ground caribou. 

It is desirable and necessary that every person 
living should know that systematic slaughter will 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 9 

exterminate the most populous wild species on 
earth, and accomplish that result in a very few 
years. Let it be remembered for all time that no 
wild species of mammal or bird can withstand 
systematic slaughter for commercial purposes. 

This applies to all wild mammals that are killed 
for their skins or their oil, all birds that are killed 
for their plumage or their flesh, and all game-fishes 
that are taken for sale. The ocean-going food-fishes 
withstand the attacks of commerce more success- 
fully than any of the species of wild life that inhabit 
the land or the small bodies of water. 

As a foundation for an exact understanding of 
the status of wild life in North America, it is neces- 
sary to know what man has accomplished, up to 
date, in the extermination of species. Through the 
history of the past we can judge clearly and accu- 
rately what man can do in the future, both in exter- 
minating and in preserving the remnant. There 
are occasions when a refusal to heed the lessons of 
the past becomes a crime. If it is a crime to steal 
$25, what shall we say of the extermination of a 
valuable vertebrate species ? 

The wanton killing of the humblest individual 
member of the human race, even a man whose vo- 
cabulary is limited to two hundred words, is mur- 
der, punishable by the severest of all penalties. We 
hold that there are circumstances under which the 
killing of a fine wild animal may be so wanton, so 
revolting and so utterly reprehensible that it may 



10 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

justly be classed as murder. The killing of an 
American bison for a tongue to sell for fifty cents ; 
the killing of a fine bull elk for a pair of misshapen 
and ugly teeth worth a dollar; the killing of a 
walrus "for fun" from the deck of a swiftly moving 
steamer; the killing of a brown pelican merely to 
see it fall, — all these are crimes, and should be 
classed in the annals of crime as murder. 

The murder of a wild-animal species consists in 
taking from it that which man with all his cunning 
never can give back, — its God-given place in the 
ranks of living things. Where is man's boasted 
intelligence, or his sense of proportion, that every 
man does not see the monstrous moral obliquity 
involved in the destruction of a species ? 

Man, the greedy and wasteful spendthrift that 
he is, has not created even the humblest of the 
species of mammals, birds and fishes that adorn and 
enrich this earth. With all his wisdom, and with all 
his resources, man has not evolved and placed here 
so much as a ground-squirrel, a sparrow or a clam. 
It is true that he has juggled with the wild horse 
and sheep, the goats and the swine, and produced 
some hardy breeds that can withstand his abuse 
without going down before it; but as for species, 
man has not yet created and placed in the fauna of 
this world so much as a protozoan. 

As it is with other forms of murder, there are 
several degrees in wild-life extermination, each of 
which should be understood. 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 11 

Local extinction means the complete blotting out 
of a species over certain specified areas, while the 
species may exist elsewhere. Thus, in the state of 
Ohio, the bison, elk, white-tailed deer, puma, black 
bear, gray wolf, lynx, otter, beaver, wild pigeon, 
wild turkey, pinnated grouse, pileated woodpecker 
and Carolina parrakeet all are locally extinct. 
Throughout fully nine-tenths of its entire former 
range, the elk has been locally exterminated. 

The practical extinction of a species means the 
destruction of its members to an extent so wide- 
spread and so thorough that the species disappears 
from view, and no living specimens can be found 
by seeking them. In the United States this is 
to-day the status of the whooping crane, upland 
plover, wolverine, California grizzly bear and other 
species. If any individuals of any of these species 
are living, they will be found only by accident. 

The extermination of a species in a wild state of 
course means that no individuals of that species are 
living anywhere save in captivity. This is the case 
with David's deer of Manchuria, and the passenger 
pigeon and Carolina parrakeet of North America. 

The absolute extermination of a species means 
that not one individual of it remains alive. Judg- 
ment to this effect is based upon the lapse of time 
since the last individual was seen or killed. When 
five years have passed without a living "record" of 
a wild specimen, it is time to place that species in 
the class of the totally extinct. 



12 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

To-day the results of man's efforts to exter- 
minate all the most valuable vertebrate life of the 
North American continent reveal various stages of 
progress. Eleven species have been totally exter- 
minated in their wild state, and of those all save 
two, the parrakeet and passenger pigeon, are 
wholly extinct. The list is as follows: 

Great auk, 
Labrador duck, 
Pallas cormorant. 
Passenger pigeon, 
Eskimo curlew, 
Carolina parrakeet, 
Cuban tricolor macaw, 
Gosse's macaw. 
Yellow-winged green parrot. 
Purple Guadaloupe macaw. 

All the above became totally extinct in a wild 
state between 1840 and 1910. 

One other species, the heath-hen or eastern pin- 
nated grouse, the counterpart of the western 
prairie-chicken, has escaped total extinction only 
by a very narrow margin. It is so thoroughly 
extinct locally that to-day it exists only in one 
locality, on Martha's Vineyard, in eastern Massa- 
chusetts, where about two hundred birds are main- 
tained under rigid protection. 

The history of the heath-hen teaches a practical 
lesson that should be of great value to the grouse 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 13 

and other game-birds of to-day, if the men of to-day 
only will heed it. It is a lesson on the folly of 
waiting too long before giving permanent protec- 
tion! This bird formerly inhabited Massachusetts, 
Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New 
Jersey and Pennsylvania. It was the first Ameri- 
can game-bird to be brought to the point of 
extermination by sportsmen. 

When its numbers were alarmingly depleted, and 
attention was strongly called to its impending fate, 
in the hope of restoring it New York, New Jer- 
sey and Massachusetts bestirred themselves, and 
enacted for the heath-hen protective laws giving it 
close seasons of five years. At the end of that 
period, it was found that the species had not per- 
ceptibly recovered; so New Jersey and New York 
gave it close seasons of ten years. 

But it was too late! The unfortunate heath-hen 
completely disappeared, everywhere save on 
Martha's Vineyard. 

The logical conclusion of this episode in exter- 
mination is of very great importance to the sports- 
men of to-day who heedlessly go on shooting van- 
ishing species of birds, in the belief that such species 
can at any time be saved and brought back by the 
application of long-close-season laws. In some 
cases, the ten-year close season possibly can bring 
back the candidates for oblivion; and it is well for 
us that this is true. With every vanishing bird 
species, however, very soon a point is reached 



14 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

beyond which it can not recover and come back. 
When birds are few and widely scattered, their 
natural enemies easily prevent their increase; and 
from that point the tendency is downward, until 
extinction is reached. 

In 1913, after persistent entreaties and far too 
long delay, the state of New York accorded her 
miserable remnant of quail a five-year close season. 
Now the question is, Has the species reached so 
low a condition that its natural enemies and winter's 
severities will be able to prevent its recovery, as 
happened with the heath-hen? The friends of the 
quail hope that the relief from persecution has not 
come too late; but it is extremely probable that in 
many localities of New York the much-beloved 
and exceedingly beneficial bob-white is extinct 
forever. 

Let the college men of America carry this mes- 
sage to every American sportsman and lawmaker 
throughout the length and breadth of the land. 
Say to them: "Beware! A point can be reached 
by a vanishing species beyond which it can not 
recover, and long close seasons are in vain. Do 
not delay until that fatal point has been passed. 
Restocking barren covers by importing quail is a 
delusion and a snare. The Hungarian partridge 
is a failure, and it can not be made to take the place 
of our own grouse and quail. Give every en- 
dangered species a five-year close season. Do it at 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 15 

once; and when that limit has expired, give it 
another." 

Wherever killable wild life is found, greed and 
ignorance are quite as deadly as shot-guns. At this 
moment, the gunners and sportsmen of Nebraska, 
Oklahoma, Iowa and Minnesota diligently and 
even joyously exercise the right that their state 
lawmakers still foolishly extend them to hunt and 
kill the pinnated grouse. In those states the man- 
with-a-gun is deaf to the appeal to reason, blind to 
the lessons of history. If the law continues its per- 
mission, those gunners very soon will shoot down 
the last pinnated grouse. Yes ; very earnest efforts 
have been made to awaken those sodden people, but 
thus far in vain. In view of the army of gunners, 
the uncountable thousands of guns, the dogs, 
wagons, automobiles, tents and other munitions of 
war that annually take the field against the prairie- 
chicken remnant, every observer is compelled to 
believe that without a quick and sweeping reform, 
the end of the species is in sight. 

At the same time other species, elsewhere, are 
similarly threatened. Consider the sage-grouse 
and the sharp-tailed grouse of the northwestern 
quarter of our great plains ; the wild turkey in half 
a dozen states ; the quail in a dozen states ; the shore- 
birds of every species; the sandhill and whooping 
cranes; the swan; the ptarmigan; the mule deer in 
several states; the mountain sheep in Wyoming, 
Montana, Idaho and Washington. 



16 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

The lists of species of birds and mammals that 
already have been locally exterminated in the vari- 
ous states of our country make in the aggregate an 
appalling showing. We do not need to grieve over 
the species that because of their size and habits 
were foredoomed to disappear before the thick 
settlements and fierce progress of civilization; but 
we are unreconciled to the needless extinction of 
species that could and would have survived had they 
been conserved on a sensible basis, and that could 
and would have yielded an annual increase of great 
value to man. 

At this moment, in addition to the eleven species 
of birds already totally exterminated on our con- 
tinent, there are at least twenty-five others that are 
prominent candidates for oblivion. Several of 
these have already been mentioned. The groups 
that are in greatest peril are the shore-birds (sixty 
species) and the grouse. Fortunately, all of the 
former save six species recently (October 1, 1913) 
have come under the protection of the federal 
migratory bird law. Unfortunately, however, none 
of the members of the grouse family are so pro- 
tected, and it is among them that serious fatalities 
are impending. 

Prior to October 1, 1913, there was another phase 
of bird destruction that gave the conservators of 
wild life very great concern. It was the destruction 
of insectivorous birds of many species by the 
Italians of the North and the negroes of the South, 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 17 

and in some localities by white men calling 
themselves sportsmen but lacking anything even 
remotely resembling a code of ethics in shooting. 

Although in general it is our duty to let bygones 
be bygones, and not rake up the disagreeable 
embers of the past, we are not yet so far on the 
road to reform that we need ignore the things of 
yesterday. The martins, swallows, nighthawks, 
robins and bobolinks that have been shot in the 
South by sportsmen as "game" and for "food," and 
the doves that have been slaughtered all the way 
from the Carolinas to California, still cry out for 
protection for the remnant. 

A little later we will consider more fully the rela- 
tions of birds and mammals to agriculture, horti- 
culture and forestry. This subject is of vast 
importance to our country, and in view of the 
extent to which it already is understood by the most 
intelligent of our American farmers, it is strange 
that the logic of the situation has not produced 
more thorough and universal protection for the 
farmers' feathered friends and allies. 

In order to lay a foundation for a comprehensive 
knowledge of the subject before us, it is impera- 
tively necessary that the forces operating for the 
extermination of wild life should be thoroughly 
known. 

To-day this country of ours is the theater of a 
remarkable struggle between the great forces of 
destruction and the small forces of protection and 



18 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

preservation. In every township throughout the 
whole United States the destroyers of wild life 
either are active in slaughter or are ready to become 
active the moment they are left free to do so. 
Every beast, bird, fish and creeping thing has its 
human enemy. Americans are notoriously enter- 
prising, restless and prone to venture. It is that 
restless activity and indomitable nervous energy 
that is manfully attempting "dry-farming" in the 
West, desert- farming in the Southwest, and the 
drainage of the Florida Everglades. Often the joy 
of the conquest of nature outruns the love of cash 
returns. Apply that spirit to forests, and it quickly 
becomes devastation. Apply it to wild life, and it 
quickly becomes extermination. 

Our conquering and pulverizing national spirit is 
a curse to all our wild life. The native of India 
permits the black buck, the sand grouse and the 
saras crane to roam over his fields unmolested for 
two thousand years. The American, and the Eng- 
lishman also, at once proceeds to shoot all of that 
wild life that he can approach within range. In 
America, the national spirit may truthfully be ex- 
pressed in the cry of the crazed Malay: ''Amok! 
Amokr "Kill! Kill!" This is why the conserva- 
tion of valuable wild life is in our country a fear- 
fully difficult task, from which most people shrink 
and seek something either more pleasant or per- 
sonally profitable. 

It may be accepted as absolutely certain that if 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 19 

the forces that now protect wild life were with- 
drawn from the field, and the destroyers were per- 
mitted to go their way unchecked, in ten years' 
time the whole United States would be as barren of 
valuable and desirable wild life as is Italy to-day. 
Imagine the carnival of slaughter that would ensue ! 

Although the remnant of game birds and quad- 
rupeds now alive in the United States represents 
only about 2 per cent of the stock that existed here 
only fifty years ago, that remnant is sufficient to 
cause the sale each year, in this country, of nearly 
half a million shot-guns, and about 500,000,000 
cartridges. We are not taking into this account the 
additional 400,000,000 cartridges that are used 
annually in trap-shooting. 

The army of destruction that annually takes the 
field against wild life, openly and according to law, 
contains at least 2,642,194 men and boys. Through 
a little investigation we found in 1911 that twenty- 
seven of our states issued hunting licenses, and that 
the total number actually issued for that year was 
1,486,228, or an average of 55,046 for each state.^ 

The twenty-one states not issuing hunting 
licenses, or not reporting, undoubtedly sent as 
many hunters per capita into the field in 1911 as 
did the other states. Computed fairly on existing 
averages, those twenty-one states were undoubtedly 

1 In 1912, when Pennsylvania enacted a license law covering the 
hunting privilege, it was estimated that 200,000 hunting licenses 
would be issued each year. In 1913 the actual number proved to be 
nearly 300,000! 



20 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

responsible for 1,155,966 men and boys hunting in 
1911 according to law, making up the grand total 
of more than 2,600,000 previously mentioned. 

To this vast body we must add another grand 
army of gunners, believed to be equally large, hunt- 
ing contrary to law and without licenses, and killing 
wild creatures, game and non-game, in season and 
out of season, to an extent of slaughter fully as 
great as that perpetrated by the licensed hunters. 

Now for an illustration of the practical effect of 
our grotesque and absurd national system of game 
protection. 

The state of Utah is, with the exception of its 
irrigated lands, a desert state. Its stock of game, 
excepting the migratory ducks of Great Salt Lake, 
is at a very low point. The population of the state 
is only 373,351, but in 1911 that state sent an army 
of 27,800 well-armed men into the field against her 
pitiful remnant of game birds and quadrupeds. 
And this sort of thing the people of America call 
"game protection"! 

In addition to the hunters themselves who annu- 
ally take the field, they are assisted by thousands 
of expert guides, thousands of well-trained dogs, 
thousands of horses, thousands of wagons and 
automobiles, and hundreds of thousands of tents. 
Each big-game hunter provides himself with an 
experienced local guide who knows the haunts and 
habits of the game, the best feeding-grounds, the 
best trails, and everjrthing else that will aid the 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 21 

hunter in taking the game at the utmost disadvan- 
tage and destroying it most thoroughly. The big- 
game rifles are of the highest power, the longest 
range and the greatest rapidity of fire that modern 
inventive genius and mechanical skill can produce. 

Every appliance and assistance that money can 
buy, the modern sportsman and gunner diligently 
secures to help him in destroying his chosen game. 
The deadliness of the automobile in hunting is 
already so well recognized that North Dakota has 
enacted a law forbidding its use against the game 
of that state. The superior deadliness of the auto- 
matic and pump shot-guns is thoroughly and 
widely acknowledged by the popularity of those 
weapons with the men who wish to kill all that the 
law allows. Look carefully at the published photo- 
graphs of game-hogs and their masses of slaugh- 
tered ducks, geese, quail and other birds, and in 
about nine out of every ten of them you will find the 
automatic shot-gun or the pump-gun, or both. 

The grand army of men and boys who hunt 
according to law assails the game during the annual 
open season. The poachers and the resident 
hunters kill it all the year round, and rarely are any 
of them caught and convicted. I am convinced that 
this class of killers is doing far more toward the 
extinction of species than is done by sportsmen. 
It is the market-gunner, however, who is most 
deadly of all. He works early and late, at least six 
days a week, and the game he seeks knows no 



22 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

respite. His skill in shooting is fatal to the game, 
and wherever market-hunting is permitted, its final 
result is the extermination of the game in the 
locality affected. 

During its breeding season the game is beset by 
its natural enemies — foxes, cats, hawks, owls, 
wolves, lynxes and other predatory species ; and to 
this must be added the cold and starvation of extra- 
severe winters. 

The bag limits, on which vast reliance has been 
placed to preserve our game from extinction, are a 
fraud, a delusion and a snare! The few local 
exceptions only prove the generality of the rule. 
In every state, without one single exception, the 
bag limits are far too high, and the laws are of 
deadly liberality. I think that in most states the 
bag-limit laws on birds are an absolute dead letter. 
Fancy ninety-five wardens in the state of New York 
enforcing the bag-limit laws on 150,000 licensed 
gunners ! In British East Africa, for a license cost- 
ing $250, you receive a lawful right to kill three 
hundred head of big game, representing forty-four 
species, — almost enough to load a ship. 

From 1885 to 1900, the agents of the millinery 
trade wrought great destruction among the birds of 
North America. In the beginning of the craze for 
stuffed birds and wild birds' plumage on women's 
hats, all kinds of bright-colored song-birds, terns, 
gulls, herons, egrets, spoonbills, ibises and the 
flamingo were used. The small birds were mounted 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 23 

entire, and the larger species were used piecemeal. 
The slaughter for millinery purposes called forth, 
as the special champion of birds, the Audubon 
Societies, state and national. Their first work con- 
sisted in prohibiting the use of song-birds, and in 
stopping the killing of gulls and terns. The Audu- 
bon people stepped in at a time when a furious and 
bloody general slaughter of our gulls and terns 
was in progress, and they literally brought back to 
us those interesting and pleasing species. But for 
their efforts, there would to-day be only the merest 
trace of the long-winged swimmers along our 
Atlantic coast. 

In the South, no power proved sufficient to save 
the unfortunate egrets and herons, the ibises, spoon- 
bills and flamingo. The flamingo is totally extinct 
throughout the United States, and of the other 
species, nothing more than sample specimens re- 
main. Of the white egrets, there are about twenty 
small colonies, each one protected from the rapa- 
cious plume-hunters by Audubon Society wardens 
or by the national government. 

But the destroyers of wild life have not been per- 
mitted to have everything their own way. To-day 
their progress is contested by an army of defenders, 
which, in the greatest battles that have been fought 
in our country, have been completely victorious. 
Enough victories have been won to demonstrate the 
fact that it is possible to save the remnant of wild 
life, and increase it. 



24 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

The defenders of wild life have accomplished 
results along the following lines : 

1. Seventy per cent of the killing of non-game- 
birds has been stopped. 

2. The killing of game has been restricted to 
open seasons, which have steadily been made 
shorter. 

3. Long close seasons, usually for five years, 
have been extended to a very few species threatened 
with local extinction. 

4. The sale of game has been prohibited in 
seventeen states. 

5. They have achieved the complete suppres- 
sion of the importation of wild birds' plumage for 
millinery, and the equally complete suppression of 
the use of native birds as hat ornaments. 

6. They have brought about the creation of a 
really great number of national and state game- 
preserves and bird refuges. 

7. There has been a partial suppression of the 
use of extra-deadly firearms in killing birds. 

8. Finally, the army of defense has secured the 
enactment of a law placing all our 610 species of 
migratory birds under the protection of the federal 
government. 

Of all these protective and restrictive measures, 
the one of greatest importance to the orchards and 
forests of our country is the law for the federal pro- 
tection of migratory birds, named in honor of 
Senator George P. McLean of Connecticut, who 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 25 

introduced and successfully advocated in the Sen- 
ate the measure that finally was enacted into law. 
This measure was championed in and through the 
House of Representatives by Mr. John W. 
Weeks of Massachusetts, now a senator. 

There is one item of history connected with that 
measure which forcibly illustrates the state of pub- 
lic feeling regarding the birds that are of practical 
value to trees and crops. All of six years ago, a 
bill was introduced in Congress for the federal 
protection of migratory game-birds. It was ably 
championed by its author, Mr. George Shiras, 3d, 
but in five years it made no progress. Subsequent 
bills of the same character were introduced by other 
members of Congress, but so long as they provided 
for the game-birds only, there was no great public 
demand for their passage, and they slumbered 
peacefully in the committees to which they had been 
referred. 

Finally, in 1912, the insectivorous birds were 
made the leading issue of a great national campaign 
that was waged in behalf of the amended McLean 
bill. On that issue the support of the press and the 
people at large was actively enlisted, and in spite 
of some doubts regarding its constitutionality, and 
its possible infringement of the rights of states, the 
measure passed the Senate without one dissenting 
vote. Later on it passed the House opposed by 
only fifteen votes. To insure action upon it, the 
measure finally was incorporated in the Agricul- 



26 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

tural Appropriation Bill, and so riding it became 
a law. 

Stated most briefly, the new law provides that 
the Secretary of Agriculture shall frame regula- 
tions for the protection, by the national govern- 
ment, of all the birds of the United States that do 
not abide continuously in any one locality, but pass 
from state to state. The regulations first proposed 
by the Secretary of Agriculture were published 
three months in advance of their becoming effective 
and during that period all persons interested were 
at liberty to be heard upon them, either in objection 
or in approval. At the end of three months, by a 
presidential proclamation which was issued on 
October 1, 1913, the final draft of the regulations 
became a federal law. 

The federal migratory bird law as now in force 
is the most potent and far-reaching measure ever 
enacted for the protection of our native birds, and 
any occurrence that would impair or destroy its 
usefulness would be a national and continental 
calamity. Its most important features are the 
following : 

1. It stops all spring shooting of migratory 
birds. 

2. It will stop the slaughter of song-birds, 
swallows, the migratory woodpeckers and other 
insectivorous birds. 

3. It confers a five-year close season on all save 
six of our sixty species of shore-birds. 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 27 

4. It shortens the northern season on water- 
fowl to about three months — a period quite long 
enough. 

5. It renders the protection of the wood- duck 
universal. 

The federal bill divides the United States into 
two life-zones, with differences between the two, in 
the regulations, which now are causing some local 
irritation; but this state of feeling will subside as 
soon as the aggrieved ones can be made to under- 
stand that at present the regulations represent the 
best wisdom and the best efforts of the Govern- 
ment, pending an actual trial of the principles 
involved. 

As in times past when "the prayers of the 
church" were invoked in behalf of persons in peril 
or distress, so do we now need to invoke the sym- 
pathy and sustaining influence of the American 
people at large in behalf of both the federal migra- 
tory bird law and the international treaty now being 
negotiated with Canada for the protection of the 
migratory birds of the continent. The law is 
necessary because of the utter inability of more 
than one-half of our states to protect their migra- 
tory birds by state laws. For twenty years, at 
least, fifteen states have sullenly refused to heed the 
demands made in behalf of the common welfare. 
The states of Maryland, Virginia, the two Caro- 
linas, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas, Tennessee, Ken- 
tucky, and until 1913 California also, have one and 



28 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

all been deplorably remiss in their treatment of bird 
life, and grossly unfair to the states northward of 
them. For example, Iowa had most obstinately 
and selfishly refused to enact a law against spring 
shooting, even after a great number of other states 
had done so. Now the federal law has terminated 
that irritating situation, — as we believe, forever. 

A state or a nation can be uncivil, ungentle- 
manly or mean, just the same as an individual. 
The new bird law "shines like a good deed in a 
naughty world," because it puts the screws of com- 
pulsion upon a number of mean and greedy states 
that toward wild life have manifested little sense of 
honor or of decency. Those who have labored 
longest in the vineyard of protection rejoice that 
they have lived to see the day when states like 
Maryland, the Carolinas and Iowa will be forced to 
give the migratory birds of the United States and 
Canada a square deal. 

From the very first inception of the idea of a 
federal law for the benefit of the migratory birds, 
its friends have feared that it would be attacked by 
the professional champions of the states' rightsi 
fetich, as an infringement on the prerogatives of 
the so-called "sovereign states." It was particu- 
larly feared that on this ancient ground much oppo- 
sition to the bill would come from the southern 
states. 

To the everlasting credit of all the southern 
states let it be stated, that up to this hour no south- 




'St 

< 
X 

H 
o 

H 

I 

a 
Q 
o 

Q 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 29 

ern man or body of men has raised this question! 
On the contrary, much of the enthusiastic support 
of "the McLean bill" and "the Weeks bill" came 
from southern protectors of wild life, particularly 
from Alabama, Tennessee and Texas. So far as the 
southern states are concerned, the old southern 
states' rights bogey seems to be dead, and we have 
no fear that an attack on the new bird law ever will 
be made by southern men. 

But how is it in the North? 

Time brings many changes, some of them both 
startling and absurd. In the Fifth National Con- 
servation Congress, held at Washington in 1913, 
the main assault on the principle of federal control 
of water-power for the benefit of the people of the 
nation at large, was led by the representatives of 
northern states, who set up a loud demand for state 
control, and state rights! 

The state of New York refused to join in that 
demand, but later on, the people of that common- 
wealth were treated to a surprise all their own. In 
reply to an inquiry from the New York State Con- 
servation Commission regarding the status of cer- 
tain trivial differences between the federal bird law 
and the New York state bird laws, Attorney- 
General Carmody propounded and published an 
official opinion to the effect that the federal migra- 
tory bird law is unconstitutional, and therefore void 
and of no effect in New York state. Later on, he 



30 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

announced that he would insist upon the enforce- 
ment of his opinion throughout the state. 

The only serious effect of the attorney-general's 
opinion was that its publication in a great many 
newspapers, with the startling head-line ''Federal 
Bird Law Declared Unconstitutional/' gave many 
timid persons a momentary scare, and an impres- 
sion that the law really may be unconstitutional. 

The champions of the bird law lost not a moment 
in challenging the soundness of the opinion, and in 
pointing out that a street-car conductor or a barber 
can as easily nullify a federal law by pronuncia- 
mento as can any state attorney-general. Their 
claim that the attorney-general's opinion was 
purely academic, so far as the enforcement of the 
federal law is concerned, was quickly substantiated 
by a statement from an assistant attorney-general 
for the United States, Mr. Kroetel, who informed 
the people of New York that the migratory bird 
law is in full force in that state, and its enforcement 
by the national government will assuredly continue. 
Although scores of newspapers between Chicago 
and Boston have commented editorially on this 
comedy of much ado about nothing, only one has 
supported the position assumed by our attorney- 
general, while all the others have severely con- 
demned it. The law is in full force in New York 
state, and it will be enforced down to the utmost 
detail, until it is either repealed by Congress, or set 
aside by the United States Supreme Court, — 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 31 

neither of which is at all likely ever to occur. At 
least twenty-five competent lawyers carefully 
studied the McLean bill before it became a law, and 
became convinced that what it proposed would be 
entirely constitutional. 

We mention this case in some detail for two rea- 
sons. The first is to make it clear that the absurd 
performance of New York's chief law officer has 
not even made a dent in the armor of the McLean 
law, and that the law is everywhere an existing fact, 
pending action by a federal court of last resort.^ 

The second reason is to point out the fact that 
the friends and champions of wild life must be con- 
stantly on the alert and ready to fight, and some- 
times must undertake the painful duty of chastis- 
ing their own friends when those friends go wrong, 
and attack the cause of protection on academic 
grounds. 

The sale of game has already been mentioned as 
one of the most powerful agencies employed in the 

1 The first decision on the status of the migratory law was that 
rendered in South Dakota on April 18, 1914, by Judge J. D. Elliott 
of the Federal Court, who decided, in the case of A. M. Shaw, that 
the law is constitutional. Mr. Shaw pleaded guilty, and was fined 
$100, which was paid. 

In the eastern district of Arkansas, at Jonesboro, on May 27, in 
the United States District Court, the case of the United States against 
Harvey C. Schauver, for a violation of the federal migratory bird law, 
was heard by Judge Jacob Trieber, who decided that "the law is uncon- 
stitutional." Of course the United States will carry the case up 
until it finally reaches the United States Supreme Court, where, with 
extra expedition, a decision may be expected in about eighteen 
months. The Arkansas decision affects only the eastern district of 
that state, and elsewhere the law will be strictly enforced. 



32 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

destruction and extermination of our wild birds. 
The destruction of game-birds by sportsmen is 
trifling in comparison with the slaughter by com- 
merce. Quite recently there was published in a 
sportsmen's magazine the records of individual 
slaughter that had been made and kept for forty 
years by a professional market-hunter. Having a 
liking for bookkeeping, the hunter kept accurate 
and continuous records. Here are the main items, 
and the grand total: In a three-months' shoot in 
Iowa and Minnesota, he killed 6,250 game-birds. 
In one winter's duck hunting in the South, he killed 
4,450 ducks. During his forty years' market- 
hunting he killed 61,752 ducks, 5,291 prairie- 
chickens, 8,117 useful blackbirds, 5,291 quail, 5,066 
snipe and 4,948 plover. His grand total of slaugh- 
ter was 139,628 game-birds and sundries, represent- 
ing twenty-nine species, several of them not game 
and useful. 

During the past fifteen years, many states have 
gradually been cleaning house in the matter of the 
commercial slaughter of their game, and many good 
half-way laws have been enacted. The original 
rule was for a state to protect its own game, but to 
permit the sale of game slaughtered in other states. 
This essentially selfish basis led to an immense 
amount of mutual poaching and selling, and the 
results were most disastrous. 

In 1911, the state of New York led the way in a 
sweeping reform. The legislature enacted the 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 33 

now famous Bayne law, which absolutely prohibits 
the sale in that state of any American wild game, 
no matter where killed, and strictly limits the sale 
of all foreign game. It does permit the importa- 
tion and sale of six species of game birds and 
mammals that are very commonly killed in Europe 
on preserves and sold for food ; and it also permits 
the sale, under official state tags, of white-tailed 
deer, mallard ducks, black ducks and pheasants 
that have been bred and reared in captivity in New 
York, and killed and tagged according to law. 

This law had the immediate and visible effect of 
stopping fully one-half of the enormous annual 
duck and goose slaughter on Currituck Sound, 
North Carolina, and it directly benefited each 
of the sixteen states in the line of annual flight of 
about 150,000 unkilled wild fowl. The action of 
New York was immediately followed by similar 
action in Massachusetts; after which, in 1913, the 
state of California also wheeled into line. The 
California law is now being attacked by a petition 
for a referendum, and the enemies of wild life 
have found 20,000 persons who were unwise enough 
to sign against the new law. 

At present the principal remaining plague-spots 
for the sale of wild game are New Haven, Provi- 
dence, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, Atlanta, 
Chicago and Denver. 

The most sweeping victory for birds that up to 
this date (1914) has been achieved was that which 



34 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

on October 4, 1913, set over the birds of the world 
an impenetrable shield for their protection from the 
feather millinery trade of America. This was 
accomplished through a clause in the new tariff bill 
absolutely prohibiting the importation of any fancy 
feathers, plumes, skins or quills of wild birds other 
than the ostriches and domestic fowls, for commer- 
cial uses. Thus was there achieved in this country, 
after six months of diligent labor, a result for which 
England throughout six years has striven in vain, 
but which now is near attainment, through a 
government measure known as "the Hobhouse 
bill." The clause in the new tariff bill, drafted by 
and championed by the New York Zoological So- 
ciety, gave the women and men of America the first 
opportunity that ever had been offered them to 
strike one crushing blow at the feather millinery 
disgrace. 

The opportunity was improved to the utmost, 
and after the fiercest battle ever waged in the 
United States Senate over any measure for the pro- 
tection of wild life, the protection cause completely 
triumphed. To-day the ports of the United States 
and its colonial possessions are absolutely closed to 
the plumage of wild birds. As a first result, con- 
sider the great quarterly feather sale in London on 
October 14. On account of the closing of the 
American market, more than one-third of all the 
feathers offered there were unsalable, and had to be 
withdrawn. In Berlin, the price of aigrettes has 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 35 

fallen 20 per cent, and in Paris the milliners fear 
that the fashion for aigrettes is as good as dead, 
because their best customers can wear them no 
more. 

The sweeping prohibition that we have enacted 
sets the pace for the civilized world. The suppres- 
sion of the cruel slaughter of the innocents at the 
behest of fashion and vanity and commercial greed, 
was here treated as a cause involving the honor of 
the nation. To-day the people of England, Hol- 
land, France and Germany are appealing to their 
governments on the same basis. The honor of 
nations demands the suppression of bird slaughter 
for plumage; and assuredly that suppression will 
come, and be made general. The crusade affects 
at least a hundred species of the most beautiful and 
curious birds of the world, the most of them to-day 
quite unprotected, so far as the laws of their home 
countries are concerned. 

In assembling our conclusions, we find that the 
first relates to the state of the public mind. 

During the past fifteen years, the improvement 
in that direction has been enormous ! To-day, dras- 
tic measures can be enacted into law which even ten 
years ago would have been deemed visionary, 
fanatical and wildly impossible. To-day a million 
American people are anxious to atone for their past 
follies in the destruction of wild life. To-day, the 
man who proposes a great reform, and appeals to 
the mass of people who do not shoot wild life, soon 



36 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

finds both sympathy and support. The greater the 
cause, the greater its chances for success — provided 
a fair amount of time, labor and money is judi- 
ciously expended on the campaign. 

With a campaign fund of $5,000, — to be ex- 
pended chiefly in printer's ink and postage, — we 
would guarantee to give any state in this union a 
new code of modern protective laws in eight 
months' time. The greatest factor in reforming 
the wild-life situation is education: for it is the 
educated people who educate their legislator's into 
the making of better laws and providing means for 
their enforcement. 

At this moment the minds of millions of Ameri- 
cans are, toward wild life, like negatives all ready 
to receive definite impressions regarding the needs 
of the hour. And imagine, if you please, what it 
would mean to the wild life of the nation if every 
college and university graduate should go forth 
with a good working knowledge of the wild-life 
situation, coupled with a fully aroused sense of 
personal duty toward it. Is it not a very great pity 
that only a few of our universities pay attention to 
this subject, and that through a lack of attention 
the services of what might have been a mighty host 
of crusaders has been lost! 

The men and women of this country who for 
years have been toiling to save the wild life of the 
nation have wrought because they have been 
spurred by a sense of duty ; merely this and nothing 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 37 

more. We of to-day have no right to destroy, or to 
permit others to destroy, the principal of a wild- 
life inheritance that belongs to posterity fully as 
much as to ourselves. We hold the wild life of our 
glorious land in trust, and it is our duty to protect 
it adequately from the spendthrifts who would 
foolishly butcher it and destroy it. 

Thanks to the fighting that already has been 
done, the army of destruction has been routed on 
many a field, and its entire line of battle has been 
checked. I wish it were in our power to speak to 
every American who loves his country and say that 
it pays to fight in this cause. In 1912, a band of 
teachers, curators and students in the University 
of California decided that it was their bounden 
duty to put forth a supreme effort to save the wild 
birds and mammals of that state from the annihi- 
lation that was then in full progress. They ad- 
dressed themselves to the task before them like 
men! They organized an army of defense such as 
California never before had seen; and they taught 
the sportsmen of California the foundation prin- 
ciples of real campaigning in behalf of wild life. 

In the terrific conflict that ensued, in which 
nearly every large newspaper in the state was 
bitterly arrayed against them, they never wavered 
or looked back. Eventually the contest ended in 
an almost complete victory for the wild-life cause, 
and in a manner that reflected great credit on the 
University of California. 



38 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

The most important conclusion to be drawn from 
the records of the past is that it is quite possible to 
save the existing remnants of our continental stock 
of wild life, and also entirely practicable. It is a 
matter of individual effort and campaign-expense 
money. Five years ago the cause seemed almost 
hopeless, and many persons predicted that in a few 
years no large game would remain anywhere in the 
United States outside of rigidly protected game 
preserves. But, thanks to the energy and persist- 
ence of the men and women on the firing-line, that 
gloomy expectation has been dissipated. It is now 
admitted that the extermination of a species is a 
crime ; that the wild life of the nation belongs more 
to the 97 per cent of people who do not go hunting 
and do not kill, than to the 3 per cent who do. It 
has been found that large men prefer to aid large 
measures, and it costs not much more to enact a 
great bill into law than it does to promote a small 
one. It has been demonstrated that millions of 
people are quite willing to promote the protection 
of wild life if they are only informed, and told what 
to do, and reasonably led. The fact that it has 
been proven possible to secure practical results has 
encouraged thousands to take hold. 

The success and popularity of the national parks 
and national game-preserves has led to great activ- 
ities in that particular field of endeavor. The 
Yellowstone Park, with its herds of bear, moun- 
tain sheep, antelope, mule deer, bison and moose, 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 39 

led straight to Glacier Park, the magnificent, with 
its 1,400 square miles of towering peaks, plunging 
valleys, glaciers, lakes and forests. As a public 
reservoir for mountain goats, sheep, grizzly bear, 
black bear and moose, it is a domain that we can 
hand down to posterity with the utmost pride. 
There is reason to believe that it will preserve the 
mountain goat from extinction in the United 
States. The magnificent forests of Douglas and 
Engelmann spruce, white pine, white cedar and fir 
that fill its valleys and fringe its lakes are a price- 
less heritage. While we think of it, we are re- 
minded how utterly and hopelessly marred would 
be that grand mountain fastness if our forbears had 
wantonly destroyed all that timber, as the men and 
boys of yesterday and to-day were striving, and 
are striving, to annihilate all our finest beasts and 
birds. 

No one thanks an ancestor who hands over to him 
only desolation, ugliness and poverty. 

In addition to the Yellowstone and Glacier 
parks, our group of national parks includes the 
Mt. Olympus National Monument in the Olympic 
mountains of Washington, a wild, rugged and 
little-known region of rough mountains and heavy 
timber, inhabited by about 1,200 elk. In the arid 
regions, the Grand Canyon National Park has 
been created, to include 101 miles of the awful 
meanderings of the mighty chasm, its northern and 
western side literally reeking with pumas and 



40 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

wolves that subsist on mule deer and mountain 
sheep. There are several smaller national parks, 
such as Sequoia, — for the big redwood trees, — 
Yosemite, General Grant and Crater Lake. 

Of great importance to the American bison are 
the four national bison ranges that have been 
created especially for the perpetuation of that 
species. Two of these have been stocked by the 
New York Zoological Society and one by the 
American Bison Society. The four are located as 
follows: in the Wichita Mountains, southwestern 
Oklahoma; in the southern end of the old Flathead 
Indian reservation near Ravalli, Montana; at 
Wind Cave, in the southern terminus of the Black 
Hills, South Dakota; and the old Fort Niobrara 
Military Reservation, in Nebraska. 

In the national parks and national game-pre- 
serves no hunting is allowed; and these are indeed 
wild-life preserves. In the vast stretches of the 
national forests that plentifully blotch with green 
the map of the western third of the United States, 
hunting is allowed in accordance with the state 
laws ; and beyond all possibility of serious question, 
the killable wild life is rapidly vanishing from those 
areas. There is no reason to believe that anywhere 
in North America where hunting is allowed, any 
species of big game except wolves are breeding 
more rapidly than they are being killed. Every 
national forest should he made a hard and fast 
national game-preserve, in which no hunting for 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 41 

sport ever should be permitted. Of course the 
noxious wild animals must be killed; but that is 
another story. 

Let me offer one painful illustration of the folly 
of leaving to the states the preservation of their 
game, as the sport of politics and favoritism, when 
it is possible for the nation at large to preserve it. 
At this moment the states of Wyoming, Montana 
and Idaho actually permit by law the hunting and 
killing of their pitiful remnants of mountain sheep. 
Their laws provide for the killing of rams only, 
and are supposed to protect the females for breed- 
ing purposes. But do they really preserve the 
breeding female sheep ? Emphatically they do not. 
Wherever sheep or goats are hilled, the females 
disappear fully as rapidly as the males! Is it not 
strange that none of those states have taken note 
of this? The result is steady and sure extermina- 
tion! Wyoming has to-day hardly more than one 
hundred wild sheep on her hunting-grounds, and 
the rapacity and determination with which those 
sheep are hunted by gentlemen sportsmen and their 
hired guides has an aspect that is positively fiendish. 

The moment the national forests become national 
game-preserves, from that moment those mountain 
sheep are assured of real protection. 

The laws of the western and Pacific coast states 
have been dictated chiefly by the sportsmen — ^the 
men who kill. They insist upon open seasons, as 
long as any killable game remains. The pressure 



42 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

of the organized sportsmen on the western state 
legislator is too great for the best interests of the 
wild life. What shall be done? 

A great step remains to be taken. Ten years 
ago, when the national forest idea was fighting for 
its life in Congress, even the President did not dare 
to mention above a whisper the logical conclusion 
of the western big-game situation, which is this : 

In the near future. Congressional legislation 
must he enacted which will make of every national 
forest a national game-preserve, in which no hunt- 
ing for sport is permitted. 

Whenever such a demand is formally launched, 
a roar of disapproval and protest will arise from 
the men of the West who now hunt in the national 
forests, and are bent on maintaining their killing 
privileges. As was the case with the Bayne bill 
against the sale of game, the cry will be raised: 
"Too drastic! Too sweeping! Revolutionary! It 
means prohibition of hunting," etc. But we have 
heard all this many times before. The thing to do, 
all over the world, is to save the wild life even 
though slaughtering privileges are cut off in the 
doing of it. 

Regarding their game, the western mountain 
states have well-nigh sinned away their days of 
grace. Let them alone a little longer, and they will 
be as barren of all game as the Colorado desert. 
In legal parlance, they have slept on their rights, — 



VALUABLE WILD LIFE 43 

their state rights to preserve their game in fact as 
well as in name. 

A little later, when Congress has recovered from 
the weariness of the conflict over feather millinery, 
we will ask for the legislation that will be necessary 
to turn each and every national forest-reserve into 
a haven of refuge and a sanctuary inviolate for the 
harassed wild birds and mammals that must find in 
them shelter and life, or perish. 

Wlien the time comes for us to undertake that 
task, we will call upon the men of Yale, both within 
these walls and without them, to make that task 
their own. If it were onlj^ possible to induce 
American college men at large to give active aid in 
that mighty struggle, a victory would positively be 
assured. The cause will loom so large that it should 
attract large men and commend itself to every 
statesman in Congress. 

Look at a map showing the national forest- 
reserves. Those reserves belong to the people of 
the nation at large — partly to you and to me. Shall 
we not exercise our lawful right to stop game 
slaughter within their borders ? Think what such a 
step would mean to the wild life of the western third 
of our country and to posterity, — to both of which 
we owe duties that we can not with honor neglect 
or evade. 



CHAPTER II 

THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 

After twenty years of more or less constant edu- 
cational work and legislative warfare, some of the 
birds of our country, that make war on the insect 
world, and protect our crops and forests, have at 
last come to their own. The passage of the 
McLean- Weeks federal migratory bird bill, in 
May, 1913, into the federal migratory bird law, was 
the crowning effort of a long and arduous series of 
campaigns! The bill was driven through both 
houses of Congress by a tornado of popular de- 
mand. For five years or longer, the Shiras bill for 
the federal protection of migratory game-hirds had 
slumbered in the pigeon-holes of the committees to 
which it had been referred, for the simple reason 
that the public at large was not deeply interested in 
the federal protection of birds that were destined 
only to be slaughtered by all kinds of gunners, and 
especially market-gunners. 

The amending of the McLean bill, by a provision 
for the protection of the insectivorous birds gen- 
erally, had the immediate effect of galvanizing the 
whole measure into life. The press of the country, 
the granges, the Audubonists, the sportsmen and 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 45 

the friends of birds at large filed such insistent and 
persistent demands for the law that Congress was 
amazed; and it is a well-known fact that several 
senators who doubted the constitutionality of the 
McLean bill purposely refrained from voting 
against it because of the strength of the popular 
demand for the law. 

And well may the producers and consumers of 
food and timber desire the protection of the birds 
that help to protect the crops and the trees at large 
from the insect hordes that are ever present to 
destroy root, branch, leaf, flower and fruit. It is 
indeed high time for the forester and the lumber- 
man to become practical bird protectionists, and 
devote both time and effort to the making of laws, 
and the enforcement of laws, for the thorough pro- 
tection of all birds that consume the insect enemies 
of trees. I believe it is no exaggeration to estimate 
that more trees are annually destroyed in the 
United States by insects than are destroyed by fire ; 
and yet much more is said about the protection of 
forests from fires than from insects. Some of the 
far western states, particularly Washington and 
Oregon, have been flooded with admirable fire- 
alarm circulars and posters; but has any state 
lumbermen's association, or any organization of 
forest protectors, ever made a whirlwind campaign 
for the better protection of forests from insects ? 

Fires are spectacular and tragic, and it is nat- 
ural that they should fix public attention far more 



46 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

than the bark-beetles, wood-borers and leaf- 
destroyers that work so silently and yet so fatally. 
The fire-watchers of the great forest regions of the 
far West are ceaselessly diligent in watching for 
smoke from peak summit and lofty tower, and tele- 
phoning the news of every fire observed ; but no one 
is able to exercise any such protective vigilance 
against the ravages of "insects. In the general 
slaughter of wild life, the most valuable of tree- 
protecting birds have been rapidly fading away. 
We first note their disappearance by the fact that 
they are much less numerous than formerly, and 
finally are becoming rare; and we know that they 
are shot and eaten by the northern Italian and the 
southern negro. 

For many reasons, it seems both desirable and 
necessary that every friend and protector of bird 
life should be armed with precise information 
regarding the economic value of our birds. In pro- 
tective warfare, such facts are continually called 
for, particularly by newspaper reporters and edi- 
tors, magazine writers, members of law-making 
bodies, and even judges on the bench who are 
friendly and anxious to help. The amount of exact 
information that must each year be furnished for 
practical use regarding the value of our insectivor- 
ous birds is enormous, and the demand for such 
information is certain to be continuous. 

Let no friend of the birds be deceived into the 
belief that because the federal migratory bird law is 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 47 

now on the national statute books, the birds neces- 
sarily are safe, without further campaigning. That 
is far from being the case. The struggle for the 
saving and bringing back of the birds is our new 
"irrepressible conflict." Let us look the situation 
squarely in the eyes, and prepare ourselves for what 
is inevitable. 

Just so long as any wild birds live there will he 
deadly enemies seeking to destroy them; and it is 
our hounden duty to he constantly on the alert, and 
ready to repel the attach of every foe. Just so 
long as repressive protective laws remain upon our 
statute books will the enemies of wild life strive to 
repeal or nullify them. 

Let us briefly review the investigations and the 
facts that have demonstrated the commercial and 
industrial value of our wild birds. Naturally, 
foresters will be interested in hearing first of the 
birds that benefit the trees of our country. 

Thousands of species of insects feed upon and 
shelter in the trees of the street, the park, the 
orchard and the forest. It is no exaggeration to 
assert that every tree has its insect enemies. The 
chief points of attack are the bark and the leaves; 
but the wood also is attacked by many destructive 
borers. To one who loves trees, who has planted 
hundreds with his own hands and caused the plant- 
ing of thousands more, there are times when the 
work of the insect pests become fairly heartbreak- 
ing. The awful chestnut blight, which is due to a 



48 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

fungus, not an insect, was first discovered in the 
northeastern states in the New York Zoological 
Park, by its chief forester, and it was then and there 
that a fierce battle was fought, of two years' dura- 
tion, to find means by which it could be stamped out. 
But the effort was in vain. The chestnut blight has 
baffled all efforts to hold it in check, or to end its 
evil progress. It was also in the Zoological Park 
that the hickory-bark borer was vigorously attacked 
for the first time in the vicinity of New York. 

In the summer of 1912, I made a few notes of the 
ravages of insects in progress at that time, under 
my observation, and of the efforts that were being 
made to stop them. Here is the memorandum : 

July 12: — The bag insects, in thousands, are devouring 
the leaves of the locusts and maples. 

The elm beetles are at work on the foliage of the elms ; and 
spraying operations are in progress. 

The hickory-bark borers are slaughtering the hickories; 
and even some Park people are neglecting to take the measures 
necessary to stop them. 

The tent caterpillars are being burned. 

The aphides (plant-lice) are destroying the tops of the 
white potatoes in the school garden of the New York Uni- 
versity, just as the potato-beetles do. 

The codling-moth larvae are already at work on the apples. 

The leaves affected by the witch-hazel gall-insect are being 
cut off and burned. 

This schedule did not attempt to take into 
account any save the most conspicuous of the insect 
pests that were in evidence on that one day. It is 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 49 

only a faint reflection of the hand-to-hand fight 
that tree-owners and tree-protectors are called 
upon to wage each year against insect enemies. 

In order that we may approach our subject in a 
thoroughly chastened and humble frame of mind, 
let us make a brief survey of the damage inflicted 
in a stated period upon agriculture, horticulture 
and forestry in the United States. 

In 1903, the Department of Agriculture very 
wisely ordered a group of its expert investigators 
and statisticians to examine and to report upon the 
annual damage inflicted by insects upon the leading 
industrial interests of our country. The investiga- 
tion was directed by Mr. C. L. Marlatt, and the 
results were published in the departmental Year- 
book of 1904. It is no exaggeration to say that 
they profoundly astonished the public. The figures 
representing damages were arrived at by obtaining 
estimates of the percentage of loss for 1903 to the 
various plant industries of the nation and to forests, 
and from the known value of the various crops the 
amount of damage to each was figured out. So far 
as I am aware, the accuracy of the published figures 
never has been disputed. The annual loss to the 
various crops ranges from 10 to 20 per cent. The 
following is the statement of annual losses on farm 
and forest products chargeable to insect pests : 



50 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



Natural forests and 






forest products^ 




$100,000,000. 


Cereals, 


10 per cent. 


200,000,000. 


Hay, 


10 per cent. 


53,000,000. 


Cotton, 


10 per cent. 


60,000,000. 


Tobacco, 


10 per cent. 


5,300,000. 


Truck crops, 


20 per cent. 


53,000,000. 


Sugar, 


10 per cent. 


5,000,000. 


Fruits, 


20 per cent. 


27,000,000. 


Farm forests. 


10 per cent. 


11,000,000. 


Miscellaneous crops. 


10 per cent. 


5,800,000. 


Total, 


$520,100,000. 



The losses inflicted by insect pests on forests and 
forest products were estimated by Dr. A. D. 
Hopkins, the departmental special agent in charge 
of forest insect investigations. Every person who 
will read, or even examine, Dr. Hopkins's writings 
on his special subject surely will be convinced that 
of all men in America he is best qualified to speak 
with authority on that subject. His estimate of 
$100,000,000 as the annual loss to timber interests 
covers the losses from insect damages to standing 
timber, and also to forest products, both crude and 
manufactured. 

Dr. Hopkins's work on the bark-beetles of North 
America is, to the layman, a startling revelation. 
For example, it shows that, leaving all other insects 
out of consideration, there are seven species of bark- 
beetles whose depredations cover the whole area of 
the coniferous forests of the United States. Each 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 51 

particularly valuable species of spruce and pine has 
its particular curse, from the Engelmann spruce 
bark-beetle of the far Northwest to the southern 
pine-beetle of Georgia and Florida. The deadly 
seven are as follows, and their areas of destruction 
are indicated by their names: 

Western pine-beetle, 
Montana pine-beetle, 



Engelmann spruce-beetle, 
Douglas fir-beetle. 
Southern pine-beetle, 
Black Hills beetle. 
Eastern spruce-beetle. 



These species cover all the areas of coniferous 
forests in the United States. 

Corn, — Of the cereal crops, corn is destroyed, — 
root, stem, leaves and fruit, — by the following 
insects : chinch-bug, corn-root worm, bill-bug, wire- 
worm, boll-worm or ear-worm, cutworm, army- 
worm, stalk-worm, grasshopper and plant-lice, — in 
all about fifty important species. Of all the cereal 
crops, Wheat is the one that suffers most severely 
from insects. Its three deadliest enemies are the 
chinch-bug, Hessian fly and plant-louse. In the 
year 1900, the Hessian fly caused, in the states of 
Ohio and Indiana alone, the loss of 2,577,000 acres 
of wheat ! 

The Hay and Forage crops are attacked by 
locusts, grasshoppers, army-worms, cutworms, web- 



52 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

worms, small grass-worms and leaf -hoppers. Some 
of these pests are so small, and work so insidiously, 
that even the farmer is prone to overlook their 
existence. The 10 per cent annual shrinkage in 
these crops was declared to be "a minimum esti- 
mate." 

Cotton. — The great enemies of the cotton- 
planter are the cotton-boll weevil, the boll-worm, 
and the leaf -worm: but there are others that do 
serious damage. In 1904 the loss from the boll- 
weevil alone, and chiefly in Texas, w^as estimated 
at $20,000,000. Before the use of arsenical poisons, 
the leaf -worm caused an annual loss of from $20,- 
000,000 to $30,000,000, but during recent years 
that total has been greatly reduced. 

Fruit, — The insects that destroy our fruit crops 
attack every portion of the tree and its fruit. The 
woolly aphis attacks the roots; the trunk and 
limbs are preyed upon by millions of plant-lice, 
scale-insects and borers; the leaves are devastated 
by the all-devouring leaf-worms, canker-worms 
and tent- caterpillars, while the fruit itself is 
attacked by the curculio, codling-moth and apple- 
maggot. By the annual expenditure of about 
$8,000,000 in cash in the spraying of apple-trees, 
the destructiveness of the codling-moth and cur- 
culio have been greatly reduced ; but of course that 
great sum must be set down as a total loss to the 
farmers and consumers, in addition to a shrinkage 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 53 

of $12,000,000 in the annual crop from insect 
ravages that could not be prevented. 

Now, in view of the foregoing, is it, or is it not, 
worth while for serious-minded men to do their 
very utmost, continuously, to protect from foolish 
and brutal slaughter man's only allies in the insect 
war, the insect-eating birds? Let us see what we 
have to gain by such protection. 

Fortunately for the producers and consumers of 
the United States, our Department of Agriculture 
has made thorough and exhaustive investigations 
into the food-habits of our insect-eating birds, and 
the results are available to the world. These 
results have been obtained by collecting a large 
series of specimens of each bird species investigated, 
covering the entire year, and carefully examining 
the contents of each stomach. 

There is one important factor, however, that 
those investigations have not taken into account, 
and that is, the enormous number of insects, or ra- 
ther of insect larvce, that are consumed by each 
nesting pair of birds in rearing its young. Each 
pair of insectivorous birds that breeds in our coun- 
try gives "hostages to fortune" in the shape of an 
ever hungry nestful of young birds. Irrevocably 
it commits itself to a line of activities in insect de- 
struction that is almost beyond belief. It is no 
uncommon thing for a pair of perching birds to 
bring insect food to their young 100, 200 or even 
250 times in a day. Fortunate indeed is the farmer 



54 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

on whose insect-ridden premises the warblers, 
phoebe birds, vireos, thrushes or catbirds make their 
nests and rear their hungry broods. 

It is well that the experts of the Department of 
Agriculture have put before us names and figures 
to reveal the work of the insectivorous birds. The 
birds do their entomological work so quietly and 
unostentatiously that until the records were given 
us, we had no adequate conception of the extent or 
the value of the work annually accomplished for us 
by our feathered friends. The average farmer 
notices most particularly the birds that damage his 
cherries and grapes. The average friend of the 
birds notices particularly those whose songs appeal 
to him, and it is only the confirmed bird-lover who 
is willing to make the observations that count. 

I heartily wish that every forester in America 
could have seen what I saw no longer ago than last 
September in the Berkshire Hills when the song- 
birds were beginning to move southward. By acci- 
dent of position, I saw a flock of perhaps twenty- 
five warblers go through the top of a large oak tree, 
starting on one side and working through to the 
other. Those little gray sprites literally combed 
the foliage of that tree-top for insects, almost leaf 
by leaf. It was done so quietly that only a watchful 
eye would have noticed it. Many other times, how- 
ever, I have watched warblers hunting through 
foliage with a thoroughness that is highly gratify- 
ing to a hater of noxious insects. 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 55 

There are five groups of birds of special value to 
us because of the insects they consume; and they 
will be named in what we believe to be the order of 
their importance. They are: 

The song-birds, 

The tree-climbers, 

The swallows and swifts, 

The shore-birds, 

The grouse and quail. 

To these are to be added a number of miscella- 
neous species of special value, such as the goat- 
suckers, certain small hawks, and a few ducks, 
egrets, herons and ibises. 

The Song-Birds of themselves alone form a 
mighty host. The great family of Warblers heads 
the list, both in number of species and in static effi- 
ciency. Except the humming-birds, they are the 
smallest of the passerine order, and the forms and 
colors of many of the species are so very inconspicu- 
ous that only the sharp eye will notice their tiny 
gray forms as they quietly flit or glide, a yard at 
each move, through the foliage that they are comb- 
ing out. Their work is mostly in the tops of the 
trees. The high- water mark in insect destruction 
is reached by these birds. Bulletin No. 44 of the 
Department of Agriculture gives the results of an 
exhaustive examination of 3,398 warbler stomachs, 
from seventeen species, and the result shows 95 
per cent of insect food, — ^mostly bad insects, too, — 



56 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

and 5 per cent of vegetable food. What more than 
that can any forester ask of a bird? 

The Baltimore Oriole stands very high as a 
destroyer of insects; and incidentally its nest is 
the most wonderful example of bird architecture to 
be found in North America. In May, insects make 
up 90 per cent of the food of this bird. For the 
entire year, insects constitute 83.4 per cent, and 
vegetable food only 16.6 per cent of its bill of fare. 

The Meadow-Lark is one of the most valuable 
of the birds that persistently frequent farming 
regions. During the insect season, 90 per cent of 
its food consists of insects, and during the year as 
a whole, insects make up 73 per cent. 

Even the Crow Blackbird, with a reputation not 
of the best, finds 27 per cent of its food in the ranks 
of our insect enemies, and it has been fully ac- 
quitted of the ancient charge of nest-robbing. 

Perhaps the most interesting single exhibit in 
all the long list of good services of insectivorous 
birds is that which brings together the known 
enemies and destroyers of the devastating cotton- 
boll weevil. This is really a southern exhibit of 
northern birds, and directly concerns half a dozen 
states of the Gulf coast of the South, states which 
we long have been earnestly exhorting to consider 
the economic value of birds, and stop within their 
borders the slaughter of the crop-protecting species. 

The list of birds that wage war on the cotton-boll 
weevil contains fifty-two species, some of which 




o* 



S t 

< ^ 

X -J 



o 



M 



O* 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 57 

make a specialty of the weevil, while others take it 
incidentally, in the course of each day's work. The 
list is far too long to quote in full, but to show the 
gallant manner in which a great number of bird 
families, and orders also, are endeavoring to do 
their part in the weevil warfare, we will offer a few 
items from the list. We notice the following 
species: six orioles, six sparrows, one goatsucker, 
one martin, five swallows, and various fly-catchers, 
wrens, blackbirds, the killdeer plover, titlark, 
meadow-lark and quail. Of these birds, the martin, 
swallows and nighthawk capture the weevils while 
they are flying high in the air; the song-birds take 
them from the cotton plants, and the quail and 
meadow-lark glean them near the ground. A 
farmer of Beeville, Texas, once reported as fol- 
lows: "The bob- whites shot in this vicinity had their 
crops filled with the boll- weevils." Another Texas 
farmer reported his "cotton-fields full of quail, and 
an entire absence of weevils." 

And yet, in spite of all this, I received not long 
since, from Texas, a photograph showing a large 
automobile almost concealed from end to end by a 
thick mantle of dead quail. 

For a change of scenery, let us glance for a 
moment at the bird enemies of the codling-moth, 
the greatest destroyer of northern apples. This list 
of thirty-six species also shows a great variety of 
birds on one particular firing-line, in which several 
different orders and thirteen families are repre- 



58 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

sented. Consider this array of birds that devour 
the larvse of the codling-moth to an important 
extent; six species of woodpeckers, two of fly- 
catchers, three jays, two blackbirds, one oriole, two 
sparrows, two warblers, six chickadees, nuthatches 
and creepers, one towhee, one cardinal, one king- 
bird, one grosbeak, one bunting, one swallow, a 
kinglet, bush-tit, robin and bluebird. 

In some places these birds have been credited 
with having destroyed from d6 to 85 per cent of 
the hibernating codling-moth larvae. 

But we must return to the consideration of the 
other important groups of insect-eating birds. 
Undoubtedly every student of forestry will be more 
interested in the work of Group No. 2, the tree- 
climbing birds, than in any other, because nearly 
every member of that group is itself a forest con- 
servator of long standing. It is at all times a great 
pleasure to consider the woodpeckers, nuthatches, 
chickadees and creepers. 

Of all man's numerous feathered friends and 
allies, the woodpeckers appeal to me most strongly. 
I admire the courage which prompts them to stay 
with us throughout the long and dreary winter, and 
take their chances of finding food and shelter. I 
admire both the indomitable industry and the 
mechanical skill with which they dig into the bark, 
and even the trunk-wood of trees, in grim pursuit 
of the insects that need to be destroyed. The 
woodpecker is a true sportsman, not an angler. 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 59 

He does not wait upon the convenience of the 
game, but he goes after it, — digging, gouging and 
drilling until the enemy is finally brought to bay, 
impaled on a tongue that is a living spear of many 
barbs and dragged forth to its doom. 

It is the woodpecker that stays with us in 
November and sticks to his job whence all but him 
have fled. When in midwinter you slowly plow 
your way through a foot of snow in the silent and 
desolated woods, and hear overhead the sound of 
digging and gouging in wood, you know that you 
are not wholly alone. Watch for falling chips, then 
look aloft, and you will see a downy or hairy wood- 
pecker busily working away on an insect-ridden 
area of tree-trunk, doing work for you and me. 
When a woodpecker beats a rolling tattoo on the 
hard outer shell of a dead limb, filling a quarter- 
mile circle with marvelously rapid sound waves, he 
is not then digging for insects. He is showing off. 
He is playing to the galleries, literally, and en- 
deavoring to attract a mate. When he really 
works, he wastes no time in theatrical drumming, 
and you must listen sharply in order to locate him. 

One of the permanent regrets of my life is that 
nature has not yet produced for the hardwood 
forests of North America a woodpecker as large 
as a condor, with a steel-tipped beak that can suc- 
cessfully drill through and split open the bark of 
the shell-bark hickory, and bring the hickory-bark 
borer to justice. 



60 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

The Downy Woodpecker is one of the smaller 
of our North American species, but of insect 
destroyers it is literally the little giant. Seventy- 
four per cent of its food consists of insects injurious 
to trees, and 25 per cent only is of vegetable origin. 
The Hairy Woodpecker is a close rival of the 
downy, in size, color, habits and dynamic force. Its 
official record is 68 per cent of insect food. Both 
these species remain in this region throughout the 
year. 

After the woodpeckers, the nuthatches and brown 
creepers render valuable service to trees by going 
over their trunks inch by inch, picking off and 
devouring the scale-insects, bark-lice and any other 
surface pests that can be captured without digging. 
Their slender beaks are like tiny forceps for all 
crevices, but they are totally unfit for the gouge 
and gimlet work in which the woodpecker excels. 

The pert little Black-Capped Chickadee also 
lives with us all winter, and it seems to be a bird of 
infinite leisure. Rarely will you see it at work. 
When you approach, it devotes all its time to visit- 
ing with you, and so long as you remain near it, its 
interest in you never flags. Inasmuch as it feeds 
upon tree-inhabiting insects, it is certain that it 
performs its small share of tree-protection work. 

In view of the very great value of the wood- 
peckers, their steady disappearance has been noted 
with increasing regret and alarm. Ten years ago, 
these birds were far more numerous in southern 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 61 

New York than they now are. I am quite certain 
that their disappearance has been caused by the 
slaughter of them for food, in the North by the 
Itahans, and in the South by negroes. In October, 
1905, two special game wardens of the New York 
Zoological Society arrested in the northern part of 
New York City two Italian guerrillas of destruc- 
tion who had in their possession forty-three insec- 
tivorous birds, five of which were woodpeckers. 

Now that the federal migratory bird law is in 
force, and the strong hand of the national govern- 
ment is to be put forth everywhere in behalf of such 
birds as these, we are given new hope for the 
stoppage of the slaughter of our most useful birds, 
and the return of the millions that have vanished. 

The group of Martins and Swallows forms a 
clearly cut avian order, every member of which is 
a potent force in insect destruction. Like the night- 
hawk, they operate in mid-air, chasing flying insects 
in full flight, and devouring them on the wing. 
They operate in a field of activity that is inaccessible 
to man, and the marvelous perfection with which 
they perform their special function is almost 
enough to compel us to go back to the old belief in 
special creation. 

The insectivorous habits of the martins and the 
swallows have long been known. Even the dullest 
swamp-mucker who ever carried a gun could not 
by any possibility shut his eyes and his brain to the 
spectacle presented by these graceful birds hunting 



62 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

insects in mid- air, or long remain in ignorance of 
their food habits. In the South, the martins and 
swallows are among the most useful and valuable 
of all birds in the destruction of the cotton-boll 
weevil. It is their peculiar function to catch the 
weevils as they make long flights, when leaving the 
cotton-fields in search of hiding-places in which to 
winter, or more congenial spots in which to con- 
tinue their work of devastation. 

In view of all this, does it not seem positively 
incredible that intelligent white men in the South, 
men who can read and write, and who popularly 
are classed as "sportsmen," can be so stupid and 
so wicked as to shoot purple martins as "game"! 
And yet it is reported that throughout sections of 
the South, the shooting of the martin is (or until 
recently has been) a common practice. Probably 
this is the reason why the purple martin is now so 
rare in the North, and survives in only a few 
localities. Over thousands of square miles of its 
former summer home it is extinct. It is such exas- 
perating doings as these that have driven some 
of us into the ranks of the so-called wild-life 
"fanatics," there to wage ceaseless warfare against 
the abominable practices of the guerrillas of 
destruction. 

Fortunately all species of the martins and 
swallows are migratory, and our hope for their 
survival is now renewed by the migratory bird law. 

The Shore-Birds, — We now have reached the 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 63 

order of shore-birds, concerning which a strange 
condition now exists. Forty years ago, aye, even 
thirty years ago, many members of this group of 
sixty conspicuous bird species were scattered 
throughout the length and breadth of our country 
east of the great plains and west of the Sierra 
Nevada Mountains. The jack-snipe, woodcock, 
killdeer plover, the curlews, dowitchers and others 
spread from the Atlantic coast to Nebraska and 
Kansas, and everyone knew them. 

To-day, in practical effect, the shore-birds of the 
United States are limited to a renmant along the 
Atlantic shore line, and another remnant along the 
Pacific coast. At long intervals between, in little 
pockets as it were, a few snipe and woodcock still 
survive, but as representatives of the great blanket 
of shore-birds that once was spread over our coun- 
try, they do not amount to anything more than 
pitiful samples. To-day, when you say to your 
neighbor that "our shore-birds are vanishing, and 
need quick protection," the chances are that he will 
look at you with a puzzled expression, and ask in 
all sincerity, "Just what are shore-birds?" This 
has actually occurred repeatedly in my experience 
during the past two years. It is a fact that to-day 
our shore-birds need an introduction to the Ameri- 
can people at large, their natural protectors. 

If we are asked to describe the order of shore- 
birds, in a few words, we may say that it contains 
the long-legged, slender-billed, plainly colored 



64 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

birds of small or very moderate size, that frequent 
the shores of all bodies of open water, large and 
small, salt and fresh, and also many regions of open 
plains and prairies. The group embraces the 
plovers, curlews, sandpipers, phalaropes, avocets, 
dowitchers, woodcock and snipe; in all about sixty 
North American species. On the farms and prairies 
of the eastern half of the United States, the species 
most commonly seen thirty years ago were the 
killdeer plover, jack-snipe and curlew. 

Until about four years ago, the shore-birds were 
regarded as of value only for food, and on that 
basis they have long been relentlessly pursued. In 
1911, a circular issued by the Department of Agri- 
culture, written by Prof. W. L. McAtee, brought 
prominently to notice the astonishing fact that the 
shore-birds are of immense value as insect de- 
stroyers, performing services that are not per- 
formed by any other birds. This revelation has 
completely changed the status of these universally 
persecuted birds, and created a demand for their 
adequate protection. 

From Professor McAtee's circular No. 79, we 
quote the following significant paragraph: 

Throughout the eastern United States, shore-birds are fast 
vanishing. While formerly numerous species swarmed along 
the Atlantic coast and in the prairie regions, many of them 
have been so reduced that extermination seems imminent. The 
black-bellied plover, or beetle-head, which occurred along the 
Atlantic seaboard in great numbers years ago, is now seen 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 65 

only as a straggler. The golden plover, once exceedingly- 
abundant east of the Great Plains, is now rare. Vast hordes of 
long-billed dowitchers formerly wintered in Louisiana; now 
they occur only in infrequent flocks of only a half dozen or 
less. The Eskimo curlew within the last decade has probably 
been exterminated, and the other curlews have been greatly 
reduced. In fact, all the larger species of shore-birds have 
suffered severely. So adverse to shore-birds are present con- 
ditions, the wonder is that any escape! In both fall and 
spring they are shot along the whole route of their migration, 
north and south. Their habit of decoying readily and per- 
sistently, coming back in flocks to the decoys again and again, 
in spite of murderous volleys, greatly lessens their chances of 
escape. . . . Shore-birds have been hunted until only a 
remnant of their once vast numbers is left. Their limited 
powers of reproduction, coupled with the natural vicissitudes 
of the breeding period, make their increase slow, and peculiarly 
expose them to danger of extermination. 

In the struggle that was made for the passage of 
the federal migratory bird law, the claims of the 
shore-birds, and the interests benefited by them, 
were strongly set forth. A demand was registered 
for a five-year close season on all species of shore- 
birds inhabiting or passing through the United 
States. This demand was redoubled after the 
enactment of the law, and while the detailed regu- 
lations were being framed. By strongly insisting 
upon the giving of the whole loaf, fifty- four out of 
our sixty species of shore-birds actually did secure 
the five-year period of protection that was de- 
manded. The species left open to slaughter were 
the woodcock, jack-snipe, greater and lesser yellow- 



66 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

legs, golden plover and black-breasted plover. The 
unhappy six, one of them already so rare as to be 
out of the reckoning, were literally thrown to the 
lions of the arena, in order that the baffled rage of 
the men who love bird slaughter might not become 
too great for the nation at large to endure. 

Personally, I never could see the slightest sport 
in shooting any of the shore-birds of the seashore; 
but to the sandpiper sportsmen those foolish little 
birds are all great game. Fancy, if you please, a 
grown man in a fifteen- dollar hunting suit, carry- 
ing a ten-dollar gun and a one-dollar license, shoot- 
ing tiny sandpipers as "game," to eat as "food"! 
It is difficult to imagine the frame of mind or the 
code of ethics of the typical sandpiper sportsman; 
but the class exists and persists, and it is to be 
reckoned with. 

To one who never has paused to consider the 
economic value of the shore-birds — and this subject 
is so very new there is much excuse for unf amiliar- 
ity with it — the value of these birds as insect 
destroyers is positively astounding. I regret that 
it is impossible to offer here more than a brief and 
inadequate impression of that value. The shore- 
bird diet includes quantities of such notorious insect 
pests as the following : Rocky Mountain locust, and 
other injurious grasshoppers; army- worms, cut- 
worms, cabbage- worms, the cotton-worm, cotton- 
boll weevil, clover-leaf weevil, clover-root curculio, 
rice-weevil, corn bill-bugs, wireworms, corn-leaf 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 67 

beetles, cucumber beetles, white grubs, Texas fever- 
tick, horse-flies and mosquitoes. Of mosquitoes, 
the shore-birds are the most important bird enemies 
known to us. 

Let us take, by way of illustration, a short series 
of cases reported by the Department of Agricul- 
ture, involving the destruction of the dreaded 
Rocky Mountain locust in the state of Nebraska, 
a region of rich farms and artificial groves. 

9 killdeer plover stomachs contained an average of 28 locusts 

each. 
11 semi-palmated plover stomachs contained an average of 

38 locusts each. 
16 mountain plover stomachs contained an average of 45 

locusts each. 
11 jack-snipe stomachs contained an average of 37 locusts 

each. 
22 upland plover stomachs contained an average of 36 locusts 

each. 

10 long-billed curlew stomachs contained an average of 48 

locusts each. 

The conditions described above were the result 
of an unusual abundance of the locusts preyed 
upon. At all times, wherever grasshoppers are 
available, they are sought by shore-birds of at least 
twenty- four species, as follows: seven plovers, six 
sandpipers, two snipes, one phalarope, the avocet, 
stilt, woodcock, dowitcher, long-billed curlew, god- 
wit, yellow-legs and turnstone. 

Nine species of shore-birds eat mosquitoes. 



68 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

Eight species devour the larvae of the crane flies 
that are so destructive to grass and wheat. 

The beautiful and once very common killdeer 
plover and the spotted sandpiper feed upon the 
army-worm and other pests of the grain-fields. 

Cutworms are eaten by the avocet, woodcock, two 
sandpipers and two plovers ; and one of the latter, 
the killdeer, destroys the cotton-worm, cotton cut- 
worm, tobacco-worm and tomato-worm. The de- 
testable bill-bug, one of the special enemies of corn, 
is eaten by eight species of shore-birds. It is 
reported from Corpus Christi, Texas, that upland 
plovers are industrious in following the plough, and 
eating the grubs that destroy garden vegetables, 
corn and cotton crops. 

An observer in Fall River, Massachusetts, has 
reported the following facts regarding the spotted 
sandpiper: "Three pairs nested in a young orchard 
behind my house, adjacent to my garden. I did not 
see them once go to the shore for food (shore about 
1,500 feet away), but I did see them many times 
make faithful search of my garden for cutworms, 
spotted squash-bugs and green flies. Cutworms 
and cabbage-worms were their special prey. After 
the young could fly, they still kept at work in my 
garden, and showed no inclination to go to the shore 
until about August 15. They and a flock of quails 
just over the wall helped me wonderfully." 

And yet, let us add, there are grown men in this 
country, tens of thousands of them, who think it is 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 69 

sport to shoot the useful spotted sandpiper, a bird 
so small that it takes at least four of them to make 
a respectable dinner portion. 

I am still claiming that every species of shore- 
bird in America now is entitled to at least a five- 
year close season, as a matter of justice, common 
sense and common decency. I regard only two 
species of shore-birds as legitimate game, at any 
time, even when they are generally plentiful. 
These are the woodcock and jack-snipe. If I had 
my will, all other species should forever be immune 
from slaughter; first, because of the good they do; 
second, because of the element of interest they add 
to shores and interior lands; and third, because as 
game-birds few of them taste good and the quantity 
of food they furnish never amounted to an item 
worthy of serious consideration. 

The advocates of shore-bird killing — and there 
are many — will tell us that "there are thousands of 
them," of various species, to be found on the south 
shore of Long Island, and elsewhere on the Atlan- 
tic coast. Last spring on a cold, raw and rainy day, 
a shore-bird sportsman took me to Great South 
Bay, during the spring flight northward. It was 
on May 27. In spite of bad weather conditions we 
steamed to and fro, in and out, around and about 
through that great watery labyrinth until we saw at 
least 2,000 shore-birds, of nine species. Had the 
day been fine and clear we would undoubtedly have 
seen many more. 



70 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

The exhibition was gratifying, not because there 
were so many birds that a single gunner would have 
enough birds of his gun, but because we found so 
much seed stock for the bringing back of those 
species. But mark you what those birds repre- 
sented. They represented the massing together 
during the two, three or four weeks of the annual 
migration northward to their breeding-grounds, of 
a very considerable portion of the stock of shore- 
birds of our whole Atlantic coast! Those birds, as 
we saw them, were at one of their most necessary 
resting-places and feeding-grounds, — an area 
which in any event should forever be to them a 
sanctuary and an inviolable refuge. 

The remaining shore-birds of North America are 
barely sufficient in number to save the order Limi- 
colas as a whole from extermination on this conti- 
nent. The five-year remedy for fifty-four species 
has been applied not soon enough to save the 
Eskimo curlew, the golden plover, and possibly 
others. But the regulation that went into effect 
on October 1, under the terms of the federal migra- 
tory bird law, is a long step in the right direction. 
Without it, we would have gone on vainly appeal- 
ing to the various states until all the birds of an 
entire order of sixty would have been blotted out, 
literally before the eyes of the friends who sought 
to save them. 

The Upland Game-Birds. — The conservation of 
our upland game-birds, the grouse and quail, rests 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 71 

on two widely different necessities. The grouse 
should be saved and increased as a food supply, and 
the bob-white quail should be protected because of 
its value as a destroyer of insects and the seeds of 
noxious weeds. Let us first consider the quail, 
because it is nearest. 

Probably 99 per cent of the farmers of this coun- 
try, and 100 per cent of the sportsmen and gunners 
outside New York, regard the common Virginia 
Quail, or Boh-White, as a bird of no economic 
value save when it is shot and eaten. To this enor- 
mous army of enemies, the bird is only a question of 
meat ounces on the table. And yet, thanks to the 
painstaking investigations of Mrs. Nice, of Clark 
University, and Professor Judd, of the United 
States Department of Agriculture, we now know 
that for the smaller pests of the farm the bob-white 
is the most wonderful engine of destruction ever 
put together of flesh and blood. I think it is fairly 
beyond question that of all the birds that influence 
the fortunes of the farmers and fruit-growers of 
North America, the common quail is the most 
valuable! 

It remains on the farm throughout the year. 
When insects are most numerous, bob-white de- 
votes to them his entire time. He destroys them 
during sixteen to eighteen hours of the summer day. 
When the insects are gone, he turns his attention 
to the weeds that are striving to seed down the 
farmer's fields for another year. He consumes, as 



72 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

palatable food, the seeds of 129 species of weeds; 
and the quantity that one bird can consume in one 
day is almost beyond belief. Ten thousand seeds 
for one bird's daily ration is a small quantity, and 
far below the average of what a healthy adult bird 
requires. To kill weeds on the farm costs money, — 
hard cash that the farmer has earned by toil, or 
labor of cash value which he himself bestows. Does 
the average farmer ever put forth any strenuous 
efforts to protect from poachers and other enemies 
the quail that work so well and so faithfully for 
him? The exceptional farmer does; the average 
farmer does not. 

All that the average farmer thinks of the quail, 
even those in his own coveys, is as so much meat for 
his table. 

A list of the 129 species of weeds whose seeds are 
eaten by the bob-white looks like a botanical rogues' 
gallery. Conspicuous in it are such old enemies as 
the pigweed, smartweed, beggar-tick, foxtail, bur- 
dock, barnyard grass, crab grass, ragweed and 
plantain. It has been calculated that if in Virginia 
and North Carolina there were four bob-whites to 
every square mile, and each bird ate one ounce of 
weed seeds per day, from September 1 to April 30, 
the total amount consumed in those two states 
would be 1,341 tons. 

As a destroyer of insects it would seem that the 
common quail deserves the first place. We know of 
no other species whose appetite covers so wide a 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 73 

variety of insect food. It is known that this bird 
consumes 145 different species of insects, and the 
list includes all the notorious insect pests of the 
farm and orchard save the few that live and work 
high up, beyond the reach of a bird that lives on the 
ground. However, the quail's repertoire includes 
the codling-moth, the garden caterpillars, flies, mos- 
quitoes, plant-lice, cotton-boll weevil and a host 
of others. 

While it is impossible to take time to name many 
of the insect species involved, we can offer a sum- 
mary of the quail's insect food, as follows ; 

Grasshoppers and locusts 13 species 

Bugs 24 species 

Leaf-hoppers and plant-lice 6 species 

Moths, caterpillars, cutworms, etc. . . .19 species 

Flies 8 species 

Beetles 61 species 

Ants, wasps and slugs 8 species 

Miscellaneous species 6 species 

Total 145 species 

It would be possible to go on at greater length, 
piling fact upon fact, to demonstrate the value of 
the quail to the farming and fruit-growing inter- 
ests; but why burden the subject with unnecessary 
proof? We are not now attempting to cover the 
quail situation of the Pacific coast, which for vari- 
ous reasons forms a chapter by itself, and needs to 
be considered independently. Regarding the situa- 



74 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

tion everywhere east of the Rocky Mountains, 
should it not be perfectly clear to every logical mind 
that the only rational course to pursue is to give the 
bob-white quail, everywhere, close seasons of five 
or ten years, or until they become so numerous as 
to be destructive to valuable crops? The quail 
needs a million champions; but instead of having 
them, it is annually beset by more than a million 
gunners. 

Instead of universal protection, to-day we find 
only three states maintaining a five-year close sea- 
son on their quail. Those states are New York, 
Oklahoma and Kansas. If there are others doing 
likewise, I have overlooked them. Throughout 
fully nine-tenths of the range of the quail, it is 
harassed and persecuted by men, dogs, automatic 
and pump guns, automobiles and public sentiment. 
In Iowa an unwise state game warden blocked the 
passage of a five-year protection law for quail on 
the fantastic ground that if the bill should become 
a law, the sportsmen of the state of Iowa would be 
so furiously angry that they would exterminate all 
the remaining quail in revenge! That idea may 
fairly be regarded as the greatest invention of the 
age in the line of conservation. 

As yet, the average American farmer is sound 
asleep on the quail question. Whether it will be 
possible to arouse him, and induce him to rise in 
his might and demand long protection for his best 
feathered friend, is now a question before the house. 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 75 

It can not be answered by a roll-call, but it could 
be answered by vigorous action. 

Our treatment of the grouse of the East and the 
Middle West is a sore subject. Draw a line around 
the former range of our old friend, the pinnated 
grouse or prairie-chicken, and you will include the 
hog-and-corn area of the United States. That, also, 
is the area of the most complete local eoctermination 
of wild life, both birds and mammals! It includes 
the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, 
Kansas, Nebraska, Kentucky and Tennessee. In 
that hog-and-corn belt you will find more spring 
shooting, more sale of game, more extermination 
and less real wild-life protection than in any other 
area of the United States. 

On the island of Mauritius, it was swine that 
exterminated the dodo. In the United States, 
hogs and game extermination still go hand in hand. 
Since the days of the dodo, however, a new species 
of swine has been developed. It is now widely 
known as the game-hog, and its existence and its 
activities have been officially recognized by both 
bench and bar. Although the name is rude and 
jarring, it is now a necessary term; and it has come 
to stay. 

Take the case of Ohio as a horrible example, — a 
state once abundantly stocked with a great variety 
and a great number of game birds and mammals. 
I think that Ohio comes the nearest of all the states 
to being gameless. With but slight exceptions, her 



76 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

laws are not wholly bad; but in the breasts of her 
citizens the desire to kill is so strong, and the 
majority of her gunners are so thoroughly selfish 
about their so-called "rights" to kill, that the game 
has ruthlessly been swept away according to law! 
The state is a striking example of the deplorable 
results of legalized slaughter. Her sportsmen will 
not have a law forbidding the use in hunting of the 
automatic shot-gun. Oh, no! They say, "Limit 
the bag, shorten the open season, and the species of 
the gun won't matter." 

As an answer to that proposition, we will file this 
list of game birds and mammals that already have 
been totally exterminated in the state of Ohio : 



Pinnated grouse. 


Elk, 


Passenger pigeon. 


Black bear. 


Wild turkey. 


Puma, 


Pileated woodpecker, 


Lynx, 


Carolina parrakeet. 


Gray wolf. 


Bison, 


Beaver, 



White-tailed deer. Otter. 

Eight species of valuable birds are reported as 
"threatened with extinction" in the near future; 
but we will not take time to name them. One of 
them is the quail. 

But to return to the grouse. 

Pinnated Grouse. — Unless there is a swift and 
complete change in the treatment accorded the 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 77 

remnants of pinnated grouse, sage-grouse and 
sharp-tailed grouse, many men now in this audience 
will live to see the day when all three of those fine 
species will become totally extinct throughout this 
countrj^ Their extinguishment at this late day 
through human greed and selfishness will be a 
national disgrace, second to the disgrace of the 
American bison only because the birds are of less 
importance to the country at large. 

To the states that still possess remnant flocks of 
pinnated grouse — notably Minnesota, the Dakotas, 
Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma — ^we have ap- 
pealed for a five-year close season; but thus far in 
vain. The noble-minded, big-hearted "sports- 
men" (!) of those states refuse to accede to the 
demand, and the lawmakers, who care a hundred 
times more about reelection than for state game, 
are afraid to act against the wishes of the so-called 
"leading organizations of sportsmen." 

In the first instance, the upland game-birds of 
the Middle West were slaughtered, wholesale, by 
market-hunters in the absence of law. Now they 
are being slaughtered and exterminated by "sports- 
men" gunners in accordance with law, — because 
the open seasons continue, and because there are 
about ten guns and one hundred cartridges against 
each surviving bird. The gunners and state law- 
makers of the Middle West sullenly refuse to hear 
and heed the lesson of the heath-hen or eastern 
prairie-chicken, which reached a point so low that 



78 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

finally even ten-year close seasons could not bring 
it back. 

Without a quick and thorough reform, that his- 
tory is destined to be reenacted between the Missis- 
sippi and the Rocky Mountains, and at least three 
fine species will totally disappear even while the 
world is crying "Shame!" It is useless to talk of 
the value of those three grouse with their annihila- 
tion actually taking place before our eyes! The 
situation is too exasperating for words. We la- 
bored hard with the Department of Agriculture to 
have the pinnated grouse — which is a migratory 
bird — included in the protection of the federal 
migratory bird law; but the hostility of the game- 
killers of the pinnated grouse territory was feared 
so much that for the present that grouse is left to 
its fate at the hands of the states that it has the mis- 
fortune to inhabit. 

The eastern ruffed grouse, often miscalled the 
"pheasant," is the only grouse of the United States 
concerning which we can at present indulge even 
a ray of hope. It inhabits timber and brush and 
rocky hillsides, it does not live in large flocks like 
the grouse of prairie countries, and it can not be 
run down with dogs, camp-wagons and automobiles 
as the prairie grouse are. It is damaged during the 
breeding season by roaming bird-dogs, but cats do 
not seriously affect it, and a bad shot seldom kills 
it. It is to other grouse what the white-tailed deer 
is to other hoofed game — a timber-loving skulker 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 79 

that will live longest because it knows best how to 
hide and to escape when attacked. It is now esti- 
mated by a Connecticut state game commissioner 
that during 1913 the 27,000 licensed gunners of 
Connecticut killed 60,000 ruffed grouse. 

Hawks and Owls, — It is impossible to complete 
a discussion of the North American birds useful to 
man without an adequate reference to the services 
of certain birds of prey. 

Men who never have fought a numerous and 
aggressive population of rats and mice do not know 
the bitterness of that unequal warfare ; but 

" The toad beneath the harrow knows 
Exactly where each tooth-point goes !" 

The rat works while men sleep; and everything 
that he can chew is open to destruction by him. 
When grain, fruit and vegetables fail, or pall upon 
the murine palate, the rat joyously attacks eggs, 
poultry and meat supplies generally. The making 
of farm products safe from hungry rats is a mad- 
dening proposition. What, then, should be the 
attitude of every farmer toward a bird like the barn 
owl, that lives on mice and rats, and is abundantly 
able, by nature, to beat the nocturnal destroyers at 
their own game? We would say in answer that 
Strioj ftammea, not Ceres, should be the patron 
saint of the farmer, and that in his eyes the barn owl 
should be ten times more sacred than the peacock is 
to a Hindoo. 



80 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

Forty years ago, if tradition speaks truly, no one 
would easily have believed it possible that any of 
the hawks and owls of the United States were 
otherwise than highly injurious to man, and there- 
fore deserving of instant death. But we live and 
learn. The shot-guns, scalpels and microscopes of 
the Department of Agriculture have placed the 
hawks and owls, all save five or six, in an entirely 
different class from that which had been theirs from 
the beginning. To-day it is only the benighted 
states of America that fail to protect the hawks 
and owls, — all save a very few species that will be 
considered, on a later occasion, as pests. 

The valuable services rendered by the useful 
hawks and owls consist in the destruction of rats, 
mice, gophers, shrews and moles. Those small and 
elusive mammals must be kept in check by their 
natural enemies, especially the nocturnal birds of 
prey and the small carnivorous mammals. 

By way of illustration, take the record of a 
famous pair of Barn Owls that once nested in one 
of the towers of the Smithsonian building at Wash- 
ington. Conditions were such that the pellets of 
indigestible animal matter disgorged by those two 
birds were accidentally preserved for an entire year, 
and thereby yielded a valuable record. Two hun- 
dred pellets were collected, consisting of bones, hair 
and feathers, and it was found that they contained 
453 skulls which represented the following mam- 
mals : 225 meadow mice, 179 house mice, 20 rats, 2 




00 


ffi 


Ci 


o 


'— ' 


X 


- 


^ 


cii 


j^ 


u 


S^ 


H 


§ 


z 


^^ 


o 
lid 


3 


u 




>^ 


ClH 




•M 




e8 


^ 


C 


< 


e 




'^ 


o 












e 


c8 


C 


;i: 


Z 


■XJ 


H 


c 


S 


oj 


< 


£ 




q; 


a: 


c 
1 




>> 


g 


XJ 








TS 


tf 


^ 


a 


T7- 


H 


^ 


X 


03 


o 


T3 


o 


»: 


< 


3 


in 


g 


z 


^ 


< 


1^ 


o 


O 






S 


4-1 

o 


PS 


^ 


< 


:« 


h 


(^ 


D^ 


O 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 81 

pine mice, 20 shrews, 6 jumping mice and 1 mole. 
The collection contained the skull of one bird only, 
a vesper sparrow. 

The Long-Eared Owl has a record for rats and 
mice very similar to that of the barn owl ; scores of 
mice, rats and shrews destroyed, but alas ! too many 
birds, also! Its nearest relative, the Short-Eared 
Owl, is a bird of precisely similar habits. 

Formerly the Red-Shouldered and Red-Tailed 
Hawks were universally known as "chicken 
hawks," hated accordingly by the farmer and shot 
whenever possible. Now it is known that those 
hawks rarely feed on domestic poultry, and that 
they devour so many wild mice and rats that they 
are decidedly beneficial to man and worthy of 
protection. 

In 1885, the rural feeling against hawks and 
owls reached high- water mark in Pennsylvania. In 
response to the demands of the farmers of the state, 
the Pennsylvania legislature enacted a law provid- 
ing a bounty of fifty cents each for the heads of 
hawks and owls. Naturally, great slaughter of 
these birds ensued. In two years, 180,000 scalps 
had been brought in and $90,000 had been paid out 
for them. 

The awakening came even more swiftly than the 
ornithologists expected. By the end of two years 
from the enactment of "the hawk law," the farmers 
found their fields and orchards thoroughly overrun 
by destructive mice, rats and insects; and again 



82 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

they went clamoring to the legislature, this time for 
the quick repeal of the law. With all possible haste 
this was brought about; but it was estimated by- 
competent judges that in damages to their crops 
"the fool hawk law" cost the farmers of the state of 
Pennsylvania more than $2,000,000. 

The moral of this episode is that it is very danger- 
ous to meddle with the balance of nature by a 
wholesale destruction of hawks and owls. There 
are a very few species that deserve to be destroyed, 
but those are now so difficult to find and so diflS- 
cult to identify at gunshot distance, that only an 
intelligent hunter is competent to undertake their 
destruction and guarantee no killings by mistake. 
To-day the really destructive species are almost a 
negligible factor in wild-life economy, and I encour- 
age no one save a bird man to go hunting for the 
objectionable hawks and owls. There is no longer 
any real necessity to provide bounties for the 
destruction of the few and now rare species of 
hawks that do more harm than good and that 
deserve destruction when they are numerous. 

In conclusion, the economic value of all the 
insect-eating and most of the rodent-eating birds is 
so great that every friend of our crops and forests 
should insist, in season and out of season, boldly and 
confidently, upon the absolute and inviolate protec- 
tion of all species save the few admitted to be pests 
deserving destruction. This proposition is not open 
to argument. 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 83 

The American people as a whole have too long 
played fast and loose with their wild life. Even 
with our good new laws, I warn every college man 
in America that the situation of the birds of the 
United States — all save the water-fowl — ^is now 
desperate. It is gravely questionable whether it 
now is possible to bring back the vanished millions 
and once more enjoy their valuable cooperation in 
our endless war of self-defense against the insect 
world. 



CHAPTER III 

THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME BIRDS AND 
MAMMALS 

After 30,000 years of wild-life slaughter, if we 
date back to the cave men of southern France who 
hunted and drew pictures of the mammoths and 
rhinoceroses of Europe, man at last is beginning 
to consider the rational treatment of the world's 
stock of game birds and quadrupeds. Perhaps one 
man out of every thousand — to make a very high 
estimate — will now admit that the finest of the 
beasts and birds and fishes have some rights which 
predatory man should respect. It must be ad- 
mitted, however, that throughout the world at large, 
at least 99 per cent of the consideration that is now 
accorded wild animals is based on thoroughly selfish 
grounds and the desire for future benefits at the 
cost of their lives. 

We are certain that there is now in the United 
States more genuine sentimental regard for wild 
life than can be found in any other country. In all 
the campaign work and the lobbying that has been 
done in Congress during the past fifteen years in 
behalf of new laws and appropriations for the 
better preservation of wild life, our cause has never 



THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME 85 

but once been ridiculed as a sentimental cause, and 
very, very little has been said in debate regarding 
the absence of money values from the wild birds 
and beasts. 

Up to this date, Congress has appropriated 
during the last seven years at least $150,000 for 
the founding of national bison ranges and herds, 
but not once has an objection been raised because 
the bison is no longer of economic value. On the 
other hand, the friends of the bison have openly 
declared to Congress that the movement to save the 
species from extinction is based entirely on senti- 
mental grounds. This state of feeling in Congress 
is mentioned because it clears the atmosphere, and 
relieves us of the necessity of defending the senti- 
mental aspect of our work. 

It would indeed be most ungrateful to omit here 
a just reference to the very important part that has 
been played by the wild life of America in the 
settlement and development of our country. In 
fact, it is so far-reaching in extent, and so enormous 
in potential value, that it fairly challenges the 
imagination. 

From the landing of the Pilgrims down to the 
present hour the wild game has been the mainstay 
and the resource against starvation of the path- 
finder, the settler, the prospector, and at times even 
the railroad-builder. In view of what the bison 
millions did for the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, 
Kansas and Texas, it is only right and square that 



86 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

those states should now do something for the per- 
petual preservation of the bison species and all 
other big game that needs help. 

For years and years, the antelope millions of the 
Montana and Wyoming grass-lands fed the scout 
and Indian-fighter, freighter, cowboy and surveyor, 
ranchman and sheep-herder; but thus far I have 
yet to hear of one western state that has ever spent 
one penny directly for the preservation of the 
antelope ! 

To the colonist of the East and the pioneer of 
the West, the white-tailed deer was an ever present 
help in time of trouble. Without this omnipresent 
animal, and the supply of good meat that each 
white flag represented, the commissariat difficulties 
of the settlers who won the country as far westward 
as Indiana would have been many times greater 
than they were. The backwoods Pilgrim's progress 
was like this: 

Trail, deer; cabin, deer; clearing; bear, corn, 
deer; hogs, deer; cattle, wheat, independence. 

And yet, how many men are there to-day, out of 
our ninety millions of Americans and pseudo- 
Americans, who remember with any feeling of 
gratitude the part played in American history by 
the white-tailed deer? Very few! How many 
Americans are there in our land who now preserve 
that deer for sentimental reasons, and because his 
forbears were nation-builders? As a matter of 
fact, are there any? 



THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME 87 

On every eastern pioneer's monument, the white- 
tailed deer should figure ; and on those of the Great 
West, the bison and the antelope should be cast in 
enduring bronze, ''lest we forgetT 

The game-birds of America played a different 
part from that of the deer, antelope and bison. In 
the early days, shot-guns were few, and shot was 
scarce and dear. The wild turkey and goose were 
the smallest birds on which a rifleman could afford 
to expend a bullet and a whole charge of powder. 
It was for this reason that the deer, bear, bison and 
elk disappeared from the eastern United States 
while the game-birds yet remained abundant. With 
the disappearance of the big game came the fat 
steer, hog and hominy, the wheat-field, fruit- 
orchard and poultry galore. 

The game-birds of America, as a class and a mass, 
have not b^en swept away to ward off starvation or 
to rescue the perishing. Even back in the sixties 
and seventies, very, very few men of the North 
thought of killing prairie-chickens, ducks and 
quail, snipe and woodcock, in order to keep the 
hunger wolf from the door. The process was too 
slow and uncertain; and besides, the really poor 
man rarely had the gun and ammunition. Instead 
of attempting to live on birds, he hustled for the 
staple food products that the soil of his own farm 
could produce. 

First, last and nearly all the time, the game-birds 
of the United States as a whole have been sacrificed 



88 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

on the altar of Rank Luxury, to tempt appetites 
that were tired of fried chicken and other farm 
delicacies. To-day, even the average poor man 
hunts birds for the joy of the outing, and the 
pampered epicures of the hotels and restaurants 
buy game-birds, and eat small portions of them, 
solely to tempt jaded appetites. If there is such a 
thing as "class" legislation, it is that which permits 
a few sordid market-shooters to slaughter the birds 
of the whole people in order to sell them to a few 
epicures. 

As the starting-point of all causes for the preser- 
vation of wild life, the men of America should agree 
upon what lawyers call a state of facts and the 
inevitable logic of the situation. Let us see if we 
can not evolve a code of ethics through the applica- 
tion of a little philosophy to the killing of game. 

Fully 95 per cent of the men and boys who kill 
American game regard game birds and mammals 
only as things to be killed and eaten, to satisfy 
hunger. This is precisely the viewpoint of the cave 
man and the savage, and it has come down from the 
Man-with-a-Club to the Man-with-a-Gun, abso- 
lutely unchanged save for one thing: the latter 
sometimes is prompted to save to-day in order to 
slaughter more abundantly to-morrow. 

Now, as a matter of fact, with the exception of 
the wildest regions of North America, that view- 
point is absolutely wrong. This country has 
reached such a stage of development and pros- 



THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME 89 

perity that even the poorest industrious man is able 
to satisfy the hunger of his family and himself 
without recourse to wild birds and mammals. To 
this rule even the poorest Florida cracker offers no 
exception, and it is only the outlaw and the moon- 
shiner who regards it as necessary to live on deer 
and wild turkeys. In all North America there is, 
I venture to assert, not one mining-camp that really 
needs to subsist upon moose and deer and ptarmi- 
gan. It is a fixed fact that no mining-camp can 
endure without a well-established line of communi- 
cation with the outside world, and the mere fact that 
moose meat and caribou steaks are a little cheaper 
than imported beef and bacon does not constitute 
an ethical reason why a valuable fauna of big game 
should be destroyed to increase the cash profits of 
Alaskan miners. 

We grant that real prospectors and explorers are 
entitled to live on wild game when it becomes abso- 
lutely necessary; but beyond them this privilege 
should not be extended to any man or men, either 
white or red. The game- slaughter privileges now 
enjoyed by the Indians of Alaska are utterly 
wrong, and should be withdrawn. All Indians, and 
all other natives, should be compelled to observe 
the same game-laws as white men. They have no 
more inherent right to the wild game of a continent 
than they have to its mineral resources or its water- 
power. 

It is now an undeniable fact that only a few of the 



90 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

American people imperatively need wild game to 
satisfy hunger or to ward off starvation. Good 
food is to be had by the thrifty in great abundance, 
everywhere save on the last frontier. We have 
become a nation of epicures, eternally picking and 
choosing the best and choicest foods and drinks out 
of a bewildering array of meats, fruits, cereals and 
vegetables. Ninety per cent of the Americans who 
go hunting for game do not know what real hunger 
is, save by hearsay. People do not buy terrapin, 
and champagne, and venison, and canvas-back 
duck, at from $2 to $3 per portion, to satisfy real 
hunger. Purchased wild game is used to pamper 
appetites that have been worn out in the service of 
luxury. 

We know very well that with only a few excep- 
tions wild game is no longer necessary to the Ameri- 
can people as food for the hungry ; but at the same 
time an abundant supply of wild meat, killed on a 
conservation basis, would make a legitimate addi- 
tion to the meat supply of the nation. 

As sensible people, we believe that when game is 
sufficiently abundant, and the killing of it does not 
spell extermination, it is right for man to take toll 
of the wilds. In my opinion, the greatest value of 
the game birds and mammals of the United States 
lies, not in their meat pounds as they lie upon the 
table, but in the temptation that the legitimate pur- 
suit of them annually puts before millions of desk- 
weary clerks, merchants, professional men and 



THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME 91 

field-weary farmers to don their beloved hunting- 
clothes, stalk out into the haunts of nature and say, 
"Begone! dull care!" 

There are millions of active men who are not 
tempted to take violent exercise in the open air 
unless there is a very definite object to pursue. On 
the other hand, a true sportsman will cheerfully 
expend $400 in money and $400 worth of hard labor 
in killing one moose in New Brunswick for a head 
that easily could be purchased for $75. 

In the summer of 1913, an eminent and very 
expensive surgeon of my acquaintance spent $4,000 
in money and $8,000 worth of time in hunting and 
killing about ten head of Alaskan big game that 
as food would have been worth in the open market 
possibly $100, but no more. The trip saved the 
doctor from a nervous breakdown, and the con- 
tinued practice of his skill is of benefit to a large 
circle of afflicted humanity. 

The right sort of a man who has had a fine day 
in the painted woods, on the bright waters of a 
duck-haunted bay, or in the golden stubble of Sep- 
tember, can fill his day and his soul with six good 
birds just as well as with sixty. The idea that in 
order to be a sportsman and enjoy a fine day in the 
open a man must kill a wheelbarrow-load of birds, 
is a mistaken idea; and if persistently^ adhered to, 
it becomes vicious. The outing in the open is the 
thing, — not the amount of blood-stained feathers 
and death in the game-bag. 



92 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

The time has come when every sportsman should 
admit that it is not wise or sportsmanhke or right 
to hunt wild game of any species in a locality 
wherein it is on the road to extermination by exces- 
sive shooting. No game should be killed more 
rapidly than it breeds. Shooting on any other 
principle means extermination; and from this grim 
conclusion there is no escape. 

In view of the fact that over nearly all the hunt- 
ing-grounds of America the wild game is being 
shot much more rapidly than it is breeding, the 
overwhelming necessity for sweeping reforms and 
for long close seasons that will bring back the game 
in abundance, should be apparent to the dullest man 
that ever carried a gun. In fact, we believe that the 
logic of the situation is quite apparent to all; but 
the selfish ones wish to kill as long as the game lasts, 
quite contemptuous of the rights of posterity. 

As one who has been a sportsman when game was 
plentiful, I do not wish to see hunting with the gun 
degenerate, as it has in Italy, to the killing of 
sparrows and pipits and sandpipers. I wish legi- 
timate sport to continue for five hundred years; 
and it is for this reason that I now insist upon long 
close seasons for disappearing species, in order that 
they may recover and come back in millions. 

As an educator of public opinion and a leader of 
thought, what position should be assumed by the 
college man regarding the utilization of wild life? 



THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME 93 

What may safely be conceded and sanely carried 
into effect? 

We must not be extremists where extremism is 
unnecessary; neither must we be frightened by the 
cry of "prohibition" that is likely to be raised 
against us. Let us resolutely hew to the line, let 
the chips fall where they will. 

We hold that the best friend of the sportsman is 
he who resolutely seeks to prevent sport with gun 
and rod from becoming extinct through the failure 
of legitimate game. 

The methods that must be applied to preserve 
legitimate sport resemble a painful surgical opera- 
tion. No man in his senses desires a surgeon to 
perform half an operation, because a complete 
operation would be doubly painful. If an evil is to 
be eradicated, we wish it done thoroughly, in order 
that the cure may be permanent. On this basis, the 
saving and restoration of American game now 
requires of us strong and resolute action. The 
patient will many times wince and cry out, but we 
know that the only way to preserve wild life is to 
enable it to breed and multiply at least as rapidly 
as it is destroyed.' 

Let us therefore lay down as one of the corner- 
stones of wild-life conservation the principle that 
no valuable wild life ever should he destroyed, for 
any purpose, faster than it breeds, unless it is 
clearly desirable that its numbers should be 
reduced. 



94 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

If we accept this principle as a rule of action, we 
can apply it literally as a blood test, in any locality 
on earth, and ascertain precisely the line of policy 
that is necessary to-day. In any given locality, ask 
the old residents this question: Is your game as 
plentiful as it was twenty years ago ? This question 
is readily answered; and throughout the United 
States there are very, very few localities in which 
it can be answered truthfully in the affirmative. 
Whenever and wherever it is answered in the nega- 
tive, there hunting should be suspended for five 
years on every species that is vanishing. 

The logic of this proposition is quite unassail- 
able ; and yet, so reckless, so greedy and so destruc- 
tive is the great mass of the army of life-takers, 
the immediate enforcement of this principle would 
produce throughout our country a roar of dis- 
approval and protest that could be heard almost 
around the world. It is this strange and unreason- 
ing state of fact that renders the task of the bird 
and mammal protectors so difficult. 

The case of small game in America, and of the 
men who pursue it, is particularly serious, because 
of the fact that there are so very, very few localities 
in which the birds are not being killed far faster 
than they are breeding. The quail, grouse and 
shore-birds are in a very desperate state. I know of 
but one locality in which even a single species of 
upland game-bird is breeding faster than it is being 
killed. In the deserts of southern Arizona, Gam- 



THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME 95 

bel's quail, a species resembling the well-known 
valley-quail of California, is gloriously holding its 
own, chiefly because its natural enemies are so few 
and sportsmen rarely molest it. Over thousands of 
square miles of creosote bushes, mesquites and cacti 
of various kinds, that handsome little quail is living 
in peace and security ; and when attacked, it knows 
that safety lies in running on the ground and not 
in taking wing and rising clear of the bushes to be 
shot. 

The rigid closing of the markets of New York 
and Massachusetts against the sale of native wild 
game has had an immediate and visible effect in 
rendering wild geese, brant and ducks more plenti- 
ful all along the Atlantic coast north of the Caro- 
linas, and also throughout the New England and 
Middle States. This increase is so marked that 
once more wild-fowl shooting has become in this 
part of the world a legitimate sport. The reduction 
of the four-months' shooting season to three 
months, as has been done by the federal migratory 
bird law, will still further promote the return of 
wild fowl to the northeastern United States, with 
the prospect that eventually there will be duck- 
shooting for thousands of sportsmen instead of 
hundreds only. From October 1 to January 16 
you now may go duck-shooting on Great South 
Bay, and on the bays and lakes of all New England, 
with a clear conscience; but I repeat that in Con- 



96 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

necticut and Rhode Island the sale of game should 
at once be stopped. 

In the state of New York, through the efforts 
of a really drastic and fairly respected bag-limit 
law, the ruif ed grouse has shown a decided increase 
in number. I mention it with pleasure as one of 
the few instances wherein a bag-limit law on birds 
has accomplished visible results. The bag limit is 
four birds in one day, or twelve per season. In 
another five years, that species may become once 
more sufficiently established that shooting may be 
resumed, even by conscientious sportsmen. To-day, 
however, no ruffed grouse should be shot in New 
York, even though the law offers a margin of four 
birds per day. 

For fifty years, to go no farther back, the 
American people have been meting out to their 
quail, pinnated grouse, ruffed grouse, sage-grouse, 
wild turkey and other upland game-birds a line of 
treatment that has been wasteful, improvident, 
cruel and positively idiotic! Every person who 
knows even the rudiments of the habits and mental 
traits of our upland game-birds knows full well that 
under real protection all species of them become 
amazingly tame. By this I mean that after two or 
three years of genuine immunity from shooting and 
other forms of molestation, flocks of quail, ruffed 
grouse, pinnated grouse and even the wild turkey 
elect to live in cultivated fields and around the 
barns and stacks of the farmer. I can cite a few 



THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME 97 

instances of the shy wild turkey, wherein those 
naturally wild and timid birds have come into a 
protected tract of three hundred acres of cultivated 
land, at Deep Lake, sixteen miles east of the settle- 
ment of Everglade, on the west coast of Florida, 
and are as tame as quails commonly become on 
farms where they never are shot at. 

Under a sensible system of conservation, 50,000,- 
000 upland game-birds might at this moment be 
living on and around the farms, ranches, and other 
cultivated lands of the United States, supplying 
5,000,000 men and boys with annual hunting and 
good food, without one cent of eoopense to anyone 
save the cost of protection from improper slaughter. 

These same birds would devour an annual incre- 
ment of insects and weed seeds that would mean an 
immense additional benefit to the farmers, fruit- 
growers and forest-owners of this country. 

But for half a century, folly and greed have 
marched hand in hand. The people at large who 
own the game in general, and the farmers who own 
it in particular, have permitted a carnival of 
slaughter of upland game-birds that was foolish, 
wasteful and wicked. The market-gunners have 
been permitted to slaughter the quail and grouse 
by the barrel, wagon-load and carload, and ship it to 
Chicago, St. Louis and other great markets, to be 
sold, or to spoil unsold, as the case might be. A 
volume might be written on the wholesale butchery 
of American game for the markets, and other forms 



98 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

of unjustifiable slaughter; but why pursue a sub- 
ject so painful and humiliating? 

What the market-hunters left, the greedy pot- 
hunters combed out, assisted by sportsmen who 
believe that it is right to shoot vanishing game just 
as long as "the law permits it!" Now, with the 
quail and grouse on the point of total disappear- 
ance, we come to the next stage of this very exas- 
perating subject. 

Having stupidly and criminally permitted the 
almost-blotting-out of our finest native game-birds, 
by treatment brutally unfair, the next step of the 
2^?znatural enemies of our wild life was the intro- 
duction of foreign species. About fifteen states 
have attempted to introduce the Hungarian par- 
tridge and ring-necked pheasant for the alleged 
reason that our quail and grouse "can't live" in their 
own country! Very determined efforts have been 
made to supplant the bob-white with Hungarian 
partridges, but I am heartily glad to say that the 
latter species has been a failure, almost everywhere 
that it has been tried on a large scale. The very 
latest confession of failure comes from California. 
I sincerely hope that the European partridge never 
will succeed in this country. If the American peo- 
ple are willing that their own quail should be 
exterminated through greed and folly, I sincerely 
hope that no foreign species can be found to take 
its place. 

If our quail and grouse are decently treated, and 






O 




c« 




VI 




^ 












•^ T 


z 


■§1 


D 


5 c 


O 


< .5 




Ih 




OJ 




• J^ 


'^ 


^> J5 


0- 


■—I be 


S 


2 ^ 
^ 


fin 


^"^ "^ 


^ 


gs 


>" 


g -^ 


m 


-C 




G O 


»^ 


— S 


^ 


+J ^ 


< 


o S 


h:] 


-S =« 




IB 


o 

h 


' -4-J 

II 


O 


(U 


Z 




Q 


3 1 


O 


m G 


U 


^ ^ 


<; 


%s 


z 


^s 


o 






1e ^ 




t» b 


g 


-7^ o 




W +j 




G cS 


u 


5j_I .^ 


h 


o a 


« 




W 


' "^ 




^ ^ 


o 




1 




Q 


§dH 


J 


^ 






^ 






o — 




1 ^ 




iH O 




a; ^ 




a M 




< ^ 



THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME 99 

sensibly protected, they will come bach so rapidly 
and so thoroughly that we will not need to look 
abroad for substitutes. But half-way or quarter- 
way measures will not serve. They require long 
close seasons, and to become effective those close 
seasons must be granted immediately! 

During the past year a fine case of retributive 
justice developed in Iowa. The state legislature 
was virtually in the act of passing a law to give 
Iowa quail a much-needed five-year close season; 
but a new and ignorant state game warden elected 
to block that legislation, and he successfully did so. 
Then, in the plenitude of his wisdom, he undertook 
to hatch and rear a great number of pheasants, to 
use in stocking the empty covers of the state; and 
I am glad to say that his pheasant-breeding opera- 
tions were a complete failure. 

Nevertheless, pheasant raising, which began on 
the Pacific coast in 1881, has proven successful in 
several states, particularly in Oregon, Washington, 
New York and Massachusetts. If the farmers of 
the states named had elected to have given to their 
quail and grouse the same protection that they 
cheerfully accorded the introduced pheasants, those 
species would to-day be ten times more abundant 
than the pheasants of foreign ancestry. 

The transplantation of any wild-animal or wild- 
bird species from one country to another is a leap in 
the dark. About one-half the efforts made in that 
direction have been beneficial, and the other half 



100 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

have resulted disastrously. Let it be borne in mind 
that the introduction of any strange species is 
attended with risks, and should not be undertaken 
save under expert advice and after the most careful 
consideration. 

On general principles it is dangerous to meddle 
with the laws of nature, and attempt to improve on 
the code of the wilderness. Our best wisdom in 
such matters may in the end prove to be only short- 
sighted folly. The trouble lies in the fact that con- 
cerning the transplantation of a species it is impos- 
sible for us to know beforehand all that will affect 
it, and all that it will affect. In its own home a 
species may seem not only harmless, but actually 
beneficial to man. We do not know, and we can 
not know, all the influences that keep it in check, 
and repress its latent propensities for evil. We do 
not know, and we can not know without a trial, how 
new environment will affect it, or what new traits 
of character it may develop. The gentle dove of 
Albion may easily become the tyrant dove of 
Cathay. The repressed rabbit of the Old World 
becomes in Australia the uncontrollable rabbit, a 
devastator and a pest of pests. 

It is now against the laws of the United States to 
introduce here and acclimatize in a wild state any 
wild-bird species without the approval of the 
Department of Agriculture. The entry of the Old 
World mongoose and the huge fruit-bat known as 
the flying fox, is absolutely prohibited. I regard 



THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME 101 

the flying fox as incapable of injury to the United 
States, but the mongoose is a four-footed terror, 
to be kept out at all costs. I think that this govern- 
ment could better afford to spend $1,000,000 in 
repression than to permit one vigorous pair of 
mongoose to become acclimatized in any of our sub- 
tropical states. As a destroyer of poultry and 
fruit, there is no animal in the American hemi- 
sphere that is at all comparable with the vicious and 
irrepressible mongoose of the East Indies. 

Concerning upland game-birds, we reach the con- 
clusion that for Americans the highest wisdom and 
the first duty lies in providing for our own native 
species, especially the quail, grouse, ptarmigan and 
wild turkey, the protection to which they are justly 
entitled, and which, if given, will enable them to 
multipl}^ beyond all numbers that reasonably could 
be expected of any foreign species. If we protect 
our quail properly, we will not need the impossible 
Hungarian partridge. If we protect our pinnated 
grouse, we will not need the Japanese or English 
pheasant. If we wish millions of upland game- 
birds for nothing, all we need to do is to give them 
the protection that any sane and reasonably intelli- 
gent people should be willing and glad to accord. 
The great question is. Can the American people 
measure up even to a very ordinary standard of 
self-repression and self-denial in order to reap 
large benefits in the future? The extent to which 
the destroyers of our forests are not reforesting 



102 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

offers very small encouragement to the friends of 
wild life. 

There is one subject that I would urge upon the 
attention of every man who is in any way interested 
in the development of our existing forests or the 
creation of new forests. It is the possibilities in the 
raising of deer in the forests and on the waste lands 
of the United States. 

Without attempting to develop precise figures, 
let us call to mind the enormous extent of the 
untillable lands of the United States that are cov- 
ered with brush and young timber, and also the 
vast areas of deciduous and coniferous forests. 
Pause for one moment, and consider the countless 
square miles of unbroken forest that you have 
looked upon from your car windows in the East, 
in the South, in the West, and in southern Canada. 
Recall the wooded mountains of the Appalachian 
system, the White Mountains, the pine forests of 
the Atlantic coast and the Gulf states ; the timbered 
regions of Tennessee, Arkansas and southern Mis- 
souri; the scrub-oak belt of Minnesota, and the 
coniferous forests of every state of the northern 
Rocky Mountain region. Then think on westward 
of the silent and untouched forest empire of the 
Pacific coast, from the Sacramento Valley to Sitka 
and Mount McKinley. Would ten million deer 
and elk make any visible impression on that vast 
green crazy-quilt of forest areas? 

But let us, for the moment, confine our thoughts 



THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME 103 

within the boundaries of the United States. From 
what we have seen with our own eyes, supplemented 
by the green areas on the maps that show the exist- 
ing forests of the United States, I think we are safe 
in making the estimate that fully one-third of the 
whole area of the United States is at this moment 
covered by forests, the remains of forests or brush- 
wood. Moreover, a large proportion of that total 
area, especially that which is situated in mountain- 
ous regions, consists of land that is incapable of 
cultivation at a profit, and therefore is outside the 
class of agricultural lands. This being the case, is 
it not imperative that the American people should 
seek to make those waste lands produce everything 
of value that they can produce without prejudice 
to the development of timber? 

Every wild deer that is born in an open forest 
and rears himself at no expense to the state or to 
any individual, is a national or state asset of real 
value. In view of the already enormous cost of 
beef, pork, mutton and poultry, it is now quite in 
order to consider our native deer as meat-producing 
animals and an important source of human food. 
The logical conclusion regarding land that is 
utterly unfit for agriculture is that it is available 
for occupancy by valuable animals, either tame or 
wild. The grazing of western cattle and sheep in 
some of the national forests of the Rocky Moun- 
tains is already a well-established industry, and 



104 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

wherever it is thoroughly prosecuted there is 
nothing left for elk and deer. 

But there are millions of square miles of other 
forests in which no herds of cattle and sheep ever 
will graze, and they seem to remain for deer alone. 
Imagine for a moment the result of introducing 
upon all the wild lands of the United States good 
colonies of deer of the species that is most suitable 
to them, permitting them to remain for fifteen years 
unmolested, and then shooting only the young 
bucks. With the female deer even reasonably well 
protected, the annual result in pounds of good 
edible flesh soon would challenge the imagination. 

Henceforth, the cost of beef and mutton to the 
people of this country is bound to remain high. The 
free grass ranges of Montana, Wyoming and Texas 
exist no longer on the old basis. Henceforth the 
great bulk of our beef supply must come, not from 
the ranches of the cattle kings of the great plains, 
but from the farms of the middle West ; and it will 
be fattened on corn worth from fifty to sixty cents 
per bushel. That means high-priced beef. The 
New York farmer now sells his calves to the 
butcher because he can not afford to raise them for 
beef ! Odd, is it not ? Yet it is quite true. 

There are counties in the state of New York, 
within fifty miles of New York City, that could 
under adequate management be made to yield annu- 
ally more pounds of venison than of beef and 
mutton, and this could be accomplished without the 



THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME 105 

annual expenditure by the state of more than 5 per 
cent of the value of the venison. 

The white-tailed deer is hardy, prolific, a good 
meat-animal and able to live well in any forest east 
of the Rocky Mountains. It asks of man nothing 
save decent protection from indecent slaughter. 
On the hoof, the adult males weigh from 150 to 300 
pounds, according to their position on the map. 
The smallest members of the white-tailed deer 
group are those of Florida and the eastern Gulf 
states, the largest are those on the line from Maine 
to Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas and 
Texas. 

The unoccupied forest lands of the United States 
could in my opinion produce annually for our con- 
sumption at least 2,000,000 adult deer, without 
deducting more than $50,000 from the wealth of the 
nation. Those deer would be worth, at a low esti- 
mate, an average of $10 each, which would mean 
$20,000,000. 

By way of illustration let us take the case of 
Vermont, which is so well fitted to the needs of the 
moment that it seems to have been specially devel- 
oped for our use. 

In the beginning, the people of Vermont exter- 
minated their original abundant stock of white- 
tailed deer. In 1870, the species was, so far as 
known, practically extinct throughout that state. 
In 1875, a few business men of Rutland decided to 
make an attempt to restock with deer the open 



106 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

forests around that city. Accordingly they went 
to the Adirondacks, procured seven female and six 
male white-tailed deer, took them to a forest six 
miles from Rutland and set them free. 

Those deer took kindly to their new home, per- 
sisted and proceeded to stock the state. None were 
killed, save a few that were shot contrary to law, 
for twenty- two years. 

In 1897, it was decided that Vermont's deer had 
become sufficiently numerous and well established 
so that deer-hunting might then begin ; but on bucks 
only. In that year 150 head were killed, and during 
the next three years, about the same number were 
taken annually. In 1901, 211 were killed; in 1902, 
561; in 1905, 791; in 1907, 1,600; in 1908, 2,208, 
and in 1909, the grand total was 5,261. For the 
year last mentioned, 1909, the average weight of the 
deer killed was 155 pounds each, which for some 
reason was far below all preceding years, and sug- 
gests an error. The total weight of venison taken 
was 716,358 pounds. Computed at the lowest 
reasonable valuation, twelve cents per pound, the 
total value for 1909 would be $85,962. 

At this point another factor presents itself for 
consideration, and that is the damage inflicted by 
deer upon farm crops. Fortunately for our pur- 
pose, Vermont has furnished the answer to that 
question, even before it is asked. 

In Vermont, the deer that now roam all over the 
state frequently visit farms and gardens and feed 



THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME 107 

upon standing crops. They love peas, beet-tops, 
turnip-tops, green corn and many other items of 
the garden. The state of Vermont wisely refrained 
from the foolish step of shooting deer found damag- 
ing crops, but elected that damages should be 
settled with cash. Furthermore, and for the reason 
that the counties inhabited by live deer were those 
that in the hunting season killed and ate of those 
deer, the state shrewdly decided that each county 
should pay for the damages inflicted by its own 
deer. This legislation required the ravaged farmers 
to pay themselves literally out of their own pock- 
ets — a very different proceeding from payment by 
the state at large, from an impersonal state treas- 
ury! Under this system each claim for damages 
became a neighborhood issue ; and for once we have 
seen claims upon public treasuries kept down to an 
honest basis. 

During the two years 1908 and 1909, the total 
number of deer claims paid was 311, but the total 
sum of them was only $4,865. Of those claims, 
102 were between $5 and $10 and 80 were under $5. 
Only four exceeded $100 and the only one which 
exceeded $200 was the largest claim of all, $326. 
The total number of deer legally killed during those 
two years, and not counting several hundred that 
were killed illegally or by accident, was 7,186, and 
at $15 per carcass they were worth $107,790 to the 
people of Vermont. This fairly answers the ques- 



108 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

tion whether the payment of those damages was a 
good investment. 

In twenty-two years, from only one small begin- 
ning of thirteen head, the state of Vermont pro- 
duced a valuable annual supply of venison. 
Against the annual increment must be set a pro- 
portion of the cost of state game wardens and the 
payment of damages, trifling totals, both; and the 
annual cost of game wardens is usually met by the 
annual receipts from hunting licenses! Had deer 
been introduced at a dozen points instead of one 
only, Vermont could have begun gathering her 
annual deer crop in fifteen years, instead of twenty- 
two years. There is no need to wait twenty-two 
years for the harvest, provided the restocking is 
done on a reasonably liberal scale. 

The people of our country are losing each year an 
opportunity to produce a large and valuable pro- 
duct in wild flesh food, at practically no cost. 
Maine is carefully conserving her deer and moose 
for legitimate shooting by sportsmen. Without 
counting up the value of the venison annually con- 
sumed by the people of Maine, no small item in 
itself, it is roughly estimated that the non-resident 
sportsmen who annually go to Maine for deer- 
shooting add to the wealth of the state at least 
$1,000,000 per year. This income has been esti- 
mated at double the sum we have named; and at 
all events, the annual deer product in that state is 
an important state asset. This product is made 



THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME 109 

possible by sensible game laws, a grasp on the 
guides and a real enforcement of the game laws. 

Now, what is the great obstacle to the production 
of 2,000,000 deer per year in the United States for 
food purposes? 

Stated without any euphemism, it is the greed, 
ignorance and utterly unwarranted notions of 
"personal liberty" that often combine in the Ameri- 
can individual. The ethics of sport and game pres- 
ervation in America are as yet in their swaddling 
clothes. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that 
until very recently, American sportsmen who shoot 
game have been without codes of ethics. With 95 
per cent of the men who shoot, the one dominant 
idea is to get the game, at all hazards, and in the 
killing of it, anything that is "lawful" is necessarily 
fair! Millions of game birds and mammals have 
been killed in the United States because the law 
unwisely permitted it, because the chance offered, 
and in order to "kill it before it should be killed by 
some other fellow." 

Now and then, a faint effort is made toward 
giving the game a fair show; but such efforts have 
been feeble and spasmodic. Only a few of our 
states have emerged from the bogs of barbarism far 
enough to protect fawns and female deer, and per- 
mit only the killing of bucks with horns not less than 
four inches in length. To-day in Pennsylvania a 
graduated M.D., backed by a club of alleged 
"sportsmen," is bitterly contesting the right of the 



110 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

state to protect hornless fawns! Now, when men of 
intelligence and means can have the hardihood to 
defend, even up to the Supreme Court of the state, 
the killing of a little hornless fawn, what can be 
expected of the horny-handed and bony-headed 
backwoodsman who does not dream that there is 
such a thing as sporting ethics ? 

The ugly fetich called "personal liberty," which 
really means license to do as the individual pleases, 
is the curse of all American wild life and the direct 
cause of an enormous amount of destruction and 
local extermination. To-day our vast domains of 
wooded mountains, hills and valleys lie practically 
uninhabited by valuable wild life, save in a few 
exceptional spots that could easily be named. We 
are losing much because we are so lawless, and 
because so many of our protective laws are treated 
as a joke. A law that is foolishly liberal is worse 
than none. We lose because we are too improvident 
to conserve our most valuable wild life, unless we 
are compelled to do so by an officer and a club. 
We are losing, because our bag-limit laws are a 
fraud, a delusion and a snare, so far as the real, 
permanent preservation of game is concerned. 

The law-breakers, the game-hogs and the shame- 
less slayers of fawns and does are everywhere. Of 
all the men in the United States to-day, I believe 
that fully 10 per cent are already poachers and law- 
breakers on the sly, or else they are ready to become 
so to-morrow. The states that contain the greatest 



THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME 111 

areas of wild lands naturally lack in population and 
in tax funds ; and at present, with the national ten- 
dencies as they are, not one such state can afford to 
put into the field even one-half enough salaried 
wardens to protect her game from surreptitious 
slaughter. The average frontiersman never admits 
the divine rights of kings, but he does ardently 
believe in the divine rights of settlers — to reach 
out and take any of the products of nature that they 
happen to need or to fancy. 

The dragon that stands between the people of 
this land and an annual increment of 2,000,000 deer 
worth $20,000,000 or more, is the lawless American 
spirit! In the dweller on the borders of civilization, 
and in the backwoods generally, that spirit is hostile 
to all conservation that restrains the party of the 
second part from taking what he desires. I now 
ask the college men of America this question : Is it 
possible to arouse public sentiment in this country 
to such a pitch of morality, right thinking and right 
doing, that a rational scheme for raising deer on 
waste lands, and properly utilizing the increase, can 
be made possible ? If this question were put to me, 
I would answer that in my opinion such a revolu- 
tion is possible throughout one-half of the territory 
affected, and even over the other half partial success 
could be achieved. 

The campaign of education and appeal that 
would be necessary would be tremendous; but in 
time, when the meat problem becomes more acute 



112 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

than it now is, it will be worth all that it will cost. 
We lay considerable stress upon this whole matter, 
because it is the bounden duty of college men to lead 
public thought into the right channels, and not 
leave ignorant people blindly groping for the truth 
and the light. 

During the past three years, we have seen what 
great results can be achieved by well-organized cam- 
paigns of education and demand. There are certain 
essentials to the realization of a dream of 2,000,000 
deer per year that are imperative; and they are 
neither obscure nor impossible. The first and the 
last is a universal square deal for the deer, and no 
killing save in accordance with the rules. The 
second is that each state and each county proposing 
to stock its vacant woods with deer must resolutely 
educate its own people to the vital necessity of 
playing fair about the killing of deer, and giving 
every deer and every man fair and just treatment. 

If the leading men of each state and county will 
take this matter seriously in hand, the end that is 
vitally necessary to success can be attained. The 
majority of the American people are not insensible 
to appeals to reason, especially when those appeals 
are backed up by their own "home folks." Our 
governors, senators, assemblymen, judges, mayors 
and justices of the peace could, if they would, make 
a campaign of education and demand that would 
result in the production of an immense volume of 
wild food in every state that possesses wild lands. 



THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME 113 

When the shoe of Necessity pinches hard enough, 
let the people remember the great possibilities in 
state and national deer farming. If there can be 
created for this idea a foundation of sound public 
sentiment, its success is absolutely assured. 

Of course every intelligent person knows full 
well that the richest and the intensively cultivated 
farming regions of the United States are not suited 
to the production and maintenance of wild game 
of any kind except quail. A state wherein every 
acre is cultivated, where population is dense and 
there is a destructive agent on every square rod of 
earth, is no fit place for grouse, ducks or deer. We 
do not demand impossibilities. But such regions 
as I have described are rare. In at least seven- 
tenths of our states, there is an abundance of woods, 
swamps and brush-covered hills furnishing suitable 
cover for quail, grouse and deer. In Massachu- 
setts, Connecticut and New York, where there is 
an abundance of waste lands, plenty of brush and 
timber and stone walls instead of barbed-wire 
fences, the white-tailed deer have enormously 
increased during the past five years. From the 
Berkshire Hills they have steadily spread south- 
ward until they have reached New York City itself, 
and the whole north shore of Long Island Sound. 
I have seen that in Putnam County, New York, 
the wooded Berkshire Hills and the Croton water- 
sheds are actually becoming populated with deer; 



114 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

and if the species is given another five-year close 
season, they will become really numerous. 

In this connection it is desirable to set forth 
pointedly the principle that forms the foundation 
of our treatment of our almost-vanished species of 
wild life. 

Every wild species of bird or mammal quickly 
recognizes protection^ and takes advantage of it to 
the utmost. 

To the protector of wild life, the most charming 
trait of wild-life character is the alacrity and con- 
fidence with which birds and mammals respond to 
the friendly advances of human friends. At the 
present critical stage of our subject, this state of 
the wild-animal mind constitutes a factor of great 
importance in arresting the extermination of species 
and in bringing them back to safe ground. This 
response to man's protection is manifested not only 
in harmless quail and song-birds, squirrels, rabbits 
and beavers, but also in deer, elk, moose, mountain 
sheep, antelope and grizzly bears. 

The tameness of squirrels in city parks is well 
known. Within the past year, a covey of wild quail 
has come several times to a rocky ledge within 
forty feet of our office window in the Zoological 
Park. I have scared gray rabbits off the front 
door mat of the Administration Building. In 
December, a gray squirrel entered my office at an 
open window, evidently seeking new nest-lining 
materials among the dry scientific pamphlets that 




Q 
o 

H 

H 

H 
K 

H 



THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME 115 

covered my side-table. In Putnam County, New 
York, the deer feed in pastures with the cows and 
browse in the gardens. Near Port Jervis, New 
York, a ruffed grouse recently nested and hatched 
a brood within two feet of the foundation of an 
occupied house. In the Wichita Bison Range, in 
Oklahoma, many thousand wild ducks now fre- 
quent the small stream that runs through it, and 
until seen in photographs their masses are unbeliev- 
able. At Palm Beach and Tampa, Florida, the 
wild ducks know the boundary lines of their pro- 
tected area quite as well as do any of the gunners. 
On their protected waters, they are fearless of man, 
but beyond the dead-line they immediately become 
wild and wary. 

The most conspicuous of all cases of the recogni- 
tion of protection by wild animals is to be found 
in the Yellowstone Park. This feeling of security is 
shared by nearly all the wild animals of the Park, 
but it is most strikingly displayed by the herds of 
mule deer, antelope and elk that make their home 
near Fort Yellowstone and the Mammoth Hot 
Springs. In winter the mule deer and antelope are 
fed on hay on the parade ground, as if they were 
domestic sheep and cattle. At Ouray, Colorado, 
bands of mountain sheep pose for photographs at 
short range, in the town, in a manner that to every 
hunter of that wild and wary species is a profound 
surprise. 

The bears of the Yellowstone Park also furnish 



116 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

an amazing exhibition. Everywhere outside the 
national or state parks, every bear is an Ishmael- 
ite, on whose head a price is fixed. Knowing well 
that every man means a rifle and sudden death, the 
overwhelming impulse of the ursine mind is con- 
stantly to watch for his arch-enemy, man, and flee 
from him the instant he is discovered. In the days 
of the old-fashioned small-bore muzzle-loading rifle, 
the grizzly was truculent, aggressive and danger- 
ous. To-day, a gray rabbit does not turn tail and 
run away any more quickly or more thoroughly 
than he. We admire the grizzly for his good sense 
and his belief in the survival of the fittest; but we 
do not respect his courage as much as we once did. 
The Yellowstone Park grizzlies, and black bears 
also, are no exceptions to the general influence of 
peace and protection. Those bears are now famous 
for the thorough and practical manner in which 
they have accepted protection, and for years have 
been reaping the benefits of it. They have become 
confirmed grafters. They not only make daylight 
visits to the garbage heaps at the hotels, but they 
have been known to enter the hotels and walk about 
in them, looking for offerings of food. Worse than 
this, they long ago began to raid the cook-tents and 
mess-wagons of camping parties of tourists, and 
despoil helpless travelers of hams, sides of bacon 
and other edibles that are of value in camps. Being 
unable, by regulation, to shoot any bears in the 



THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME 117 

Park, even in self-defense, the lot of many a tourist 
and cook has been rendered decidedly unhappy. 

Once, however, the worm did turn. Mr. C. J. 
Jones, otherwise known as "Buffalo Jones," 
decided that a certain marauding grizzly had 
become too great a nuisance to be borne; so after 
due preparation he roped that grizzly around one 
of its hind legs, threw the end of the lariat over the 
limb of a tree, and quickly suspended the bear 
between the heavens and the earth. While the 
enraged animal swung in that ignominious position, 
wildly snapping and clawing at the empty air, Mr. 
Jones vigorously belabored him with a bean-pole. 
When the punishment had been well jfinished, the 
bear was set free; and instead of pausing to rend 
the witnesses of his humiliation, or even to punish 
the author of it, he wildly fled for the tall timber, 
wherein he turned over a new leaf. 

The readiness and the certainty with which wild 
birds and mammals accept protection, and come 
back to the old haunts and the old numbers, fur- 
nish us with the best of all reasons for providing 
that protection. It is within the power of the 
American people to have our country once more 
teeming with wild life, if the people at large elect 
to have it so. Within reasonable limits, any partly 
destroyed wild species can be increased and brought 
back by giving it absolute protection from harass- 
ment and slaughter. This does not mean, however, 
an annual open season for thirty days, or two weeks, 



118 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

or two days, or any other period. It means absolute 
immunity from slaughter until the stock has become 
so great that the increase may be taken. Every 
species that is strugghng to recuperate deserves to 
be left entirely unmolested, and free from meddle- 
some management or alleged assistance in the 
slaughter of the so-called surplus males. To this 
well-known law of nature we know of not one 
exception. Every breeding wild animal craves 
seclusion, entire immunity from excitement, and 
protection from all forms of persecution. Nature 
demands this as her unassailable right. 

The methods by which our birds may be encour- 
aged are very simple. First of all, the gunners, 
netters, dogs and cats must be eliminated. It is now 
stated by some men who claim to be versed in fox 
lore that red foxes destroy very little wild bird life. 
The claim is certainly worthy of serious considera- 
tion. In severe winter weather, quail that are strug- 
gling to reestablish themselves should be abun- 
dantly fed, and shelters should also be provided. 
For the perching birds, nest-boxes must be erected, 
and food offered of kinds suitable to the needs of 
the various species. For the woodpeckers, nut- 
hatches, chickadees and other special tree-protec- 
tors, lumps of suet covered by wire netting, or of 
fat pork, must be nailed to tree-trunks on the sunny 
side. The ruffed grouse must sustain themselves, 
because it is almost impossible to offer them, in a 
wholesale way, any food that they will accept. 



THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME 119 

As a final word on the subject of bringing back 
the birds, I wish to offer a warning against an error. 
Among the gunners and sportsmen who wish to 
preserve to the very last their right to kill, we often 
hear it said that "the cold winters have killed all the 
quail," and "the cold winters kill more quail than 
the sportsmen." Now, it is a curious fact that, con- 
trary to all the rules of logic and common sense, the 
killing of quail by cold winters is by many men 
advanced as a reason against better protection for 
the quail by long close seasons! It seems incredible 
that such folly should emanate from reasoning 
beings ; but it does. And, mark you, the men who 
so mournfully talk about the "cold winters" never 
in the fall refrain from shooting because of a cold 
winter and decimation. Furthermore, they never 
advocate five-year close seasons to enable the flocks 
to recover before being blotted out. No. They 
heartlessly go right on shooting those half- starved 
survivors, meanwhile protesting against real 
protection. 

And then, when the end has come, and the covers 
are tenantless, they seek Hungarian partridges for 
restocking, — because "our quail can't stand the 
climate" ! 

I ask all friends of wild life to insist upon it, in 
season and out of season, that our quail and grouse 
can stand the climate of their own homes if they are 
given a square deal and not exterminated by selfish 
men, dogs and cats. I have no patience with the 



120 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

men who dolefully talk about cold winters and go 
right on shooting. Let us stand for our native 
game, right or wrong, and demand for it just and 
rational treatment. We can bring it back if we 
will! 

In stocking new game-preserves, both national 
and private, the question of inbreeding frequently 
is raised. Naturally, there is solicitude that the 
original stock should not deteriorate, and private 
owners usually are willing to expend both effort 
and money in preventing deterioration through 
inbreeding. 

Several celebrated cases of the inbreeding of wild 
animals have come to our knowledge, and from 
them we may draw a definite conclusion. The 
European red deer of the North Island of New 
Zealand represents the greatest case of inbreeding 
of wild animals on record. Originally, New Zea- 
land possessed no large game, and no deer of any 
kind. In 1864, three European red deer were taken 
from the royal park at Windsor Castle, England, 
and after many vicissitudes were liberated not far 
from Christchurch. The trio consisted of a buck 
and two does. They found an abundance of food, 
and promptly they settled down in their new home 
and began to breed. Now, the North Island con- 
tains not less than 10,000 deer, every one of which 
has descended directly from the famous three. 
And here is the strangest part of the story : The red 
deer of New Zealand are to-day physically larger 



THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GAME 121 

and more robust, with longer and heavier antlers 
and longer hair, than any of the red deer of Europe 
west of Germany. They represent the greatest 
inbreeding experiment on record; and the sports- 
men of New Zealand have grand sport and take 
many fine trophies. 

A similar experiment with fallow deer has been 
carried out on the island of Lambay, in the Irish 
Sea, with three animals transplanted from the 
mainland of Ireland in 1892. From that slender 
stock has sprung a large herd, which, but for the 
number purposely killed and others that have been 
accidentally killed by falling over the cliffs during 
storms, now would number several hundred head. 
No new blood has been introduced and no deer have 
died of disease. Neither the owner of Lambay, Mr. 
Cecil Baring, nor his gamekeepers, have been able 
to discover any deterioration in those deer, either in 
size, antlers, fertility or general physical stamina. 
And yet, strange to say, that island has an area of 
only one square mile, 640 acres ! 

These two demonstrations, and others that could 
be named, fairly establish the following new 
principle : 

When healthy wild animals are established in a 
state of nature, either absolutely free, or confined 
in preserves so large that they roam at will, seek 
the food of nature and take care of themselves, in- 
and-in breeding produces no ill effects and ceases to 
be a factor. The animals develop in physical per- 



122 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

fection according to the climate and their food 
supply, and the introduction of new blood is not 
necessary. 

With domestic animals, full of the diseases of 
domestication, inbreeding has a natural tendency 
to multiply diseases and accentuate weaknesses. 
They breed by artificial selection, they lead lives of 
inactivity and their food may or may not be adapted 
to their wants. The processes of nature are seri- 
ously interfered with, and the domestic animal lives 
only because it is strong enough to withstand man's 
erratic and faulty treatment. I repeat, therefore, 
that with healthy wild animals roaming free in 
immense ranges, and seeking nature's food supply, 
the evil effects of inbreeding, usually inseparable 
from herds of domestic animals, do not appear ; and 
if the blood of the original stock is good, no new 
blood is necessary. 

In conclusion, it is quite clear that the business of 
bringing back the almost-vanished wild life of our 
country, and developing it into an asset of great 
value, is a field offering very great possibilities. 
Certainly it is worth the serious attention of serious 
men. The great obstacles to be overcome are the 
ignorance, greed and apathy of a large section of 
the public. If they can be overcome, great things 
are possible. 



CHAPTER IV 

ANIMAL PESTS AND THEIR RATIONAL 
TREATMENT 

To any one who attempts to deal with problems 
and campaigns for the benefit of wild animals, the 
so-called wild-animal pests quickly become of prac- 
tical importance. Civilized man is prone to go 
about with a chip on his shoulder and a gun in his 
hand, looking for some bird or mammal that has 
inflicted damage on some of his sacred possessions, 
in order that he may kill the accused with a con- 
science most virtuously clear. The loss of a thirty- 
cent chicken sometimes arouses a twenty-dollar 
indignation in the breast of a poultry farmer, 
regardless of a credit balance of perhaps $30 in the 
hawk's account for rats and mice destroyed. 

To know precisely what the real pests are among 
wild mammals and birds seems very much worth 
while. This knowledge is necessary to the forester, 
first, in order that he may protect the innocent, and 
secondly, that the guilty may be brought to justice. 
Again, there are times in particular localities when 
the local individuals of a species generally believed 
harmless, or even valuable, actually may become a 
nuisance so serious as to require abatement. 



124 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

In approaching this subject we offer four 
propositions : 

First, A wild bird or mammal species may inflict 
upon human interests a certain amount of damage, 
yet not be so destructive as properly to be listed as 
a pest. 

Second, Under exceptional local conditions, a 
species usually quite harmless may suddenly become 
so destructive as to compel its classification locally 
as a pest, and to demand its local abatement by 
systematic measures. 

Third, Certain species are everywhere so destruc- 
tive to valuable property that wherever found they 
should be destroyed. 

Fourth, Sometimes destructive individuals are 
so rare that it is unwise to provide bounties for 
their destruction, because such bounties often lead 
unscrupulous or ignorant hunters to destroy valu- 
able birds and mammals, through mistakes in iden- 
tification, or alleged mistakes. 

We can not inveigh too strongly against the 
ignorant and intolerant spirit that leads a farmer 
or orchardist to seek revenge upon the bird world 
for every petty damage that may be inflicted upon 
his fruit orchard or field crop. 

On the other hand, we can not and will not 
ignore the unbearable damages that sometimes are 
inflicted by wild birds and mammals on the crops or 
herds of farmers who can ill afford to submit to a 
serious waste of the means whereby they live. 



PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 125 

On the whole, this subject demands exact knowl- 
edge, nice discrimination and judicial treatment. 
Upon the very threshold of the subject, I wish to 
impress most strongly upon the mind of every stu- 
dent the vital necessity of evidence that can stand 
the test of cross-examination. It is very desirable 
that every person who may be called upon to deal 
with wild life, and decide the fate of creatures that 
are helpless in their own defense, should spend a 
few days in a court-room, listening to the trials of 
half a dozen cases of different kinds. A court- 
room is the best place in the world in which to learn 
what constitutes real evidence, and to learn the 
imperative necessity of taking testimony on both 
sides of a serious question. 

Let me cite a celebrated case bearing on this 
point, to illustrate what easily becomes the wicked 
folly of hastily calling a wild species a pest, 
and condemning it to destruction on insufficient 
evidence. 

For several years prior to the year 1900, the 
fishermen of San Francisco had been complaining 
that the sea-lions of the California coast were 
devouring enormous quantities of salmon and other 
valuable food fishes, and that they had greatly 
diminished the annual fish supply. In addition to 
this, it was claimed that the sea-lions caused great 
damage to fishermen's nets and impounded fishes. 
The fishermen formally demanded of the California 



126 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

State Fish Commission that the sea-lions be 
destroyed. 

Without pausing to make even a pretense of 
investigating the charges, the Fish Commission 
ordered that the sea-lions should be destroyed; and 
the Commission obtained from the United States 
Light-House Board, in Washington, written per- 
mission to carry out the slaughter on the govern- 
ment lighthouse reservations, as well as elsewhere. 

The news of the proposed slaughter was at once 
laid before certain eastern naturalists, who doubted 
the justice of the death verdict on the sea-lions, and 
demanded proof that the animals were guilty as 
charged. Finding that there existed no evidence 
of a specific and convincing nature, and that no 
scientific investigation of the food habits of the 
California sea-lions ever had been made, they 
entered quick and vigorous protests against the 
proposed slaughter and demanded its suspension 
pending an adequate investigation. When the 
facts in the case were laid before the Light-House 
Board, the Board's permission to kill was imme- 
diately revoked by telegraph. 

But the California state authorities had power 
to act on the water frontage of the state, and in a 
few localities the killing of sea-lions proceeded. 

By good fortune, it happened that during the 
killing operations that took place in Monterey Bay 
and vicinity, Prof. L. L. Dyche, of the University 
of Kansas, arrived upon the scene to pursue special 



PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 127 

studies in marine life. Being of an inquiring turn 
of mind, he carefully dissected and examined the 
stomachs of twenty dead sea-lions that had washed 
ashore, and of five others that he killed for the 
purpose of mounting their skins. Now mark the 
result : 

Every stomach examined contained the remains 
of squids and devil-fish (Octopus), one or both; 
both of which are among the fisherman's enemies! 
Not one of the twenty-five stomachs examined con- 
tained any portion of a scaled fish! 

In 1901, two investigators from the United 
States Fish Commission conducted an extensive 
investigation of this subject, and reported upon it 
very fully in 1902. At six points on the California 
coast they killed twenty-four specimens of the 
California sea-lion and eighteen of Stellar's sea- 
lion. Their detailed report revealed the fact that 
the California sea-lion lives chiefly on squid, and 
the diet of the Stellar embraces both squid and 
scaled fishes, but as they found it the food of the 
latter consisted of an assortment of species of little 
value, and contained not one salmon or shad. 

But for the interference of those meddlesome 
eastern naturalists, both the species of sea-lions 
inhabiting the coast of California would have been 
destroyed, down to a very low point in numbers, 
in punishment for crimes of which they were almost 
wholly innocent ! The obvious moral of this episode 
is — never condemn a wild-animal species on insuffi- 



128 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

cient evidence, and especially not on charges pre- 
ferred by ignorant persons. Investigate; take 
testimony on both sides, and be very certain that 
you are right before you sign the death warrant. 

In taking up our four principles one by one, we 
begin with that which concerns the species which 
inflict some damage to man's interests, but not 
sufficient to deserve death. 

A few years ago we heard much about the robins, 
blue jays and thrushes that devour cherries and 
strawberries and other small fruits. Of late, how- 
ever, we have heard from the horticulturists very 
little on this point. The farmers have learned to 
value the good services of those birds, and the birds 
themselves have vastly diminished in number. The 
agricultural press has rendered such excellent ser- 
vice in behalf of the insectivorous birds that now, 
and henceforth, we have little reason to fear that 
any American farmer of sufficient industry and 
intelligence to maintain fruit-trees will be so igno- 
rant as to kill the insectivorous birds that each sea- 
son take a few cherries and other small fruits in 
payment for their labor in destroying insects. 

The most serious indictment against these birds 
that I ever have heard comes from the vineyards 
along the southern shore of Lake Erie, where the 
robin has done serious damage by his habit of 
taking a single grape at each descent, thereby for 
each grape spoiling the appearance of a marketable 
bunch. 



PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 129 

The blue jay has been indicted for numerous 
petty offenses against the farmer, but his record as 
a destroyer of insects has saved him from punish- 
ment. Recently, however, a new fact has been 
revealed which when fully known should make this 
saucy and handsome bird the safest from harm of 
all our small birds. It is known that the eggs of 
the deadly brown-tail moth hatch in the autumn, 
and the young pass the winter in nests that are 
formed in trees. To meet this unusual condition, 
the blue jay blithely seeks out those nests in winter, 
tears them open, and devours the contents! Now, 
if this is not sufficient to induce every forester to 
look upon the blue jay with a protecting eye, 
nothing ever will avail. 

Various species of blackbirds destroy small 
amounts of grain, but I never knew a farmer to kill 
one on that account. No one else knows half so 
well as the plowman the industry and success of our 
old friend the purple grackle in gleaning the abomi- 
nable white grub-worms out of the freshly turned 
furrows, and the lonesome plowman finds real com- 
panionship in the birds that follow him with 
cheerful industry, hour after hour, when the field is 
destitute of other company. 

Only once have I ever known an individual crow 
to be so diligent in wrong-doing as to deserve the 
death penalty. In 1902, many young ducks were 
hatched in the Zoological Park, and no sooner had 
the ducklings taken to the waters of the Wild- 



130 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

Fowl Pond than they attracted the deadly atten- 
tion of an old crow, also nesting in the Park, with a 
nestful of young of her own to maintain. She 
began feeding those ducklings to her brood, and her 
industry soon became appalling. After the sixth 
duckling had been swept into that corvine vortex, it 
became painfully evident that we must choose 
between one brood of crows and about one hundred 
ducklings. It became our painful duty to order 
the destruction of that crow; which was done; and 
her nestlings were taken and reared by hand. That 
was the first and last occasion on which we 
ever found it necessary to sign a death warrant 
returnable against a crow. Crows may easily be 
kept out of a cornfield by erecting a scarecrow 
representing a man with a gun. 

Concerning the fruit-eating habits of a number 
of our most valuable insectivorous birds, there is 
one way out of the difficulty that is obvious, but 
very, very rarely carried into effect. It consists 
in the planting of a few Russian mulberry and 
sweet-cherry trees on every farm, especially for the 
birds. For four years. State Game Commissioner 
John M. Phillips, of Pittsburgh, has been educat- 
ing the people of Carrick, Pennsylvania, old and 
young, into this method of attracting birds, and 
providing for their needs. The fruit of the Russian 
mulberry is greatly liked by birds, and it ripens 
continuously throughout four months of the year. 



PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 131 

There should be inaugurated a general movement 
for the planting of these trees. 

Our second subject relates to the species of birds 
and mammals that usually are harmless, but under 
exceptional local conditions sometimes become 
pests that require abatement/ 

The principle involved is best explained by 
examples. The most world-famous case is that of 
the introduction of the European rabbit in Aus- 
tralia. Under the restrictions imposed by hunters, 
poachers, hawks and owls in densely populated 
England, the English hare is so scarce as to be 
harmless. In Australia, with abundant food, a 
hospitable climate and practically nothing to keep 
the species in check, it multiplied to such an extent 
as to constitute an intolerable pest. In southern 
California, Texas and Oklahoma, the wild jack- 
rabbit in the same manner once increased so 
enormously that wholesale killing measures became 
necessary to keep down the total. 

In one locality in the state of Oregon, eagles once 
became so numerous that their depredations on the 
lambs of the flocks of the sheep-owners became too 
great to be borne. When the case was laid before 

1 The crow has long been fought over, by a small minority that 
recounts his wrong-doings and demands his blood, which is opposed 
by an overwhelming majority that recounts the bird's good deeds 
and resolutely prevents his being slaughtered. It is perfectly true 
that some of the ways of the crow are very trying; but when all the 
evidence has been brought in and weighed and measured, the good 
deeds of the crow in devouring grasshoppers, cutworms and other 
bad insects, meadow mice and other bad rodents, are so many that 
Corvus seldom is condemned to wholesale destruction. 



132 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

an eastern bird protector and his judgment was 
asked, he advised that the over-supply of eagles 
should by shooting be reduced to a point sufficiently 
low so that subsequent depredations would be 
endurable. Fortunately, that condition was con- 
fined to a small area and it was by no means neces- 
sary to enact a general law providing for state-wide 
eagle destruction. In fact, such a law would have 
been a mistake. 

About five years ago a gentleman living on 
Shelter Island, near the eastern end of Long 
Island, liberated a herd of white-tailed deer in a 
county wherein deer-shooting is permitted by law 
on two days only of each year. Two years later, 
complaints were made that on Shelter Island it was 
impossible to maintain a vegetable garden, on 
account of the depredations of deer. It was claimed 
that it was impossible to build a wire fence high 
enough so that those deer could not leap over it; 
but that statement was, and is, open to doubt. The 
conditions described above suggested a law to pro- 
vide for the abatement of wild-animal nuisances, 
which was proposed by the framers of the revised 
game-laws of the state of New York, and adopted. 
It appears in the code of that state as Section 158, 
and its full text is as follows: 

Power to Take Birds and Quadrupeds. In the event that 
any species of birds protected by the provisions of section two 
hundred and nineteen of this article, or quadrupeds protected 
by law, shall at any time^ in any locality, become destructive 



PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 133 

of private or public property, the commission shall have power 
in its discretion to direct any game protector, or issue a permit 
to any citizen of the state, to take such species of birds or 
quadrupeds and dispose of the same in such manner as the 
commission may provide. Such permit shall expire within four 
months after the date of issuance. 

We commend this measure for enactment into 
law in every state of the Union, on the ground that 
it offers a rational and safe remedy for many 
legitimate grievances that otherwise can not be 
redressed. There is no reason why wild animals 
should be permitted to destroy large quantities of 
private property without recourse. 

In a previous lecture we referred with some detail 
to the damages of wild deer to the gardens, orchards 
and farm crops of Vermont, and the Vermont 
treatment of such cases. Each county is authorized 
and required to settle in cash the damages inflicted 
upon its own residents, and the system is in opera- 
tion throughout the state, apparently to the satis- 
faction of every one concerned. It having been 
reported that female deer, hitherto immune from 
slaughter, had become so numerous and so tame 
that they constituted a nuisance, the state very 
wisely and justly decided that it was necessary to 
reduce the number. Accordingly, a law was passed 
permitting the killing of female deer, with the 
intent to leave it in force until the total number of 
female deer has been reduced to a proper point, 
when it will be repealed. 



134 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

In small city parks, gray squirrels can easily 
become so numerous as to constitute a pest to 
nesting birds. It is a mistake to permit one hun- 
dred squirrels to exist in a park so small that it has 
room for only twenty or less. A swarm of restless 
and hungry squirrels will attack nesting birds, and 
devour both eggs and young birds. A park that 
has become infested with red squirrels — our most 
destructive and objectionable species — deserves to 
be delivered from the pest by the use of a .22-caliber 
rifle, fitted with a Maxim silencer in order that the 
process may not be made painfully conspicuous in 
the ears and eyes of the public. 

I am distinctly not in favor of slaughtering birds 
merely because at rare intervals they flock in grain- 
fields and consume grain. The period wherein 
grain destruction is possible is very brief; and the 
proper way to protect the crops is by spending a 
few dollars in systematically frightening the birds 
and compelling them to move on. In all such cases, 
the shot-gun should be the farmer's last resort, not 
the first. I am a firm believer in the use of blank 
cartridges in the preservation of fruit and field 
crops from the unbearable attacks of birds, but the 
farmer who uses them runs the risk of being without 
his feathered friends when he most needs their aid ! 

The time was, a few years ago, when we all con- 
ceded that the rice-growers of the Carolinas had a 
moral right to hire negroes to slaughter bobolinks 
(or rice-birds) with shot-guns, for the protection 



PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 135 

of the rice crops. To-day the rice-growing industry 
in the Carolinas is nearly dead, and the old condi- 
tions no longer exist. There now remains no excuse 
whatever for the slaughter of bobolinks for sport, 
for food or to protect crops. The bobolink-rice- 
bird is no longer in the pest class, and it deserves the 
same permanent protection that is accorded the 
robin and thrush. 

The bobolink is a useful bird; but mark you the 
ill turn it has been served by the evil reputation that 
forty years ago was forced upon it by the rice 
planters of the Carolinas. Because it ate rice, that 
beautiful songster, which part of the year does 
good execution on insects and weed seeds, was shot 
for food, as an alleged "pest." Sportsmen entered 
into the slaughter and some have continued in it. 
By reason of this ancient, out-of-date and now 
wholly libelous excuse, the sportsmen of certain 
states now continue to shoot bobolinks as "game." 
Strangest of all bird-killing spectacles, every 
autumn we see in the District of Columbia, about 
1,100 gunners take the field, and slaughter bobo- 
links for "sport," all around the Capitol of this bird- 
protecting nation ! 

Everywhere throughout the world, save in one 
place, the killing of female hoofed and horned game 
is, by conscientious men and true sportsmen, re- 
garded as highly destructive to species, and there- 
fore quite inadmissible. No species can long 
withstand the destruction of its mothers ! No man 



136 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

who kills female hoofed game for sport can prop- 
erly be called a sportsman, nor can he be said to 
have a code of ethics. But there is one exception 
to this otherwise universal rule regarding female 
hoofed game, and I mention it because of the very 
great rarity of such cases. It relates to the elk of 
the Yellowstone Park. 

For many years past, the finest and largest male 
elk of the Yellowstone Park herds have been shot 
to death outside the Park by sportsmen and 
poachers, for their heads and "tusks." As a result 
of this relentless culling-out process, it is now very 
difficult to find in Wyoming or Montana a large 
bull elk with a really heavy and imposing pair of 
antlers. The twelve-point bulls are not only very 
few in number, but their antlers are, as a rule, light 
and mediocre. And yet, the actual number of elk 
in the Yellowstone region is 47,000; and only 
recently there was great elk starvation in the Jack- 
son Valley, the winter home of the great park herds. 

As an actual fact, there is at present a great over- 
supply of female elk and an alarming insufficiency 
of winter grazing-grounds. In addition to these 
evils, the sires of the great elk herds are immature 
animals, really unfit for breeding purposes; and 
their calves, many of them, are too weak to survive 
their first winter. 

This situation is beset with problems and diffi- 
culties. Our own answer to the puzzle is that the 
stock of breeding females must resolutely be 



PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 137 

reduced, and the sires of the herds must he 
improved. Our advice is: For five years stop the 
killing of male elk, and during that period kill 2,500 
cow elk each year. This plan we believe is the only 
solution of the elk problem that ever will prove 
effective, and place the herds on a firm basis for 
the future. 

A few years ago, certain interests in Penn- 
sylvania raised a great public outcry against the 
alleged awful destruction of fish in the streams of 
Pennsylvania by herons. The case was made so 
serious that the fish commissioner demanded that 
state protection be removed from the herons and 
certain other birds. The state game commissioners 
were hoodwinked into accepting the charges as true, 
and they virtually permitted the throwing of the 
herons into the arena of slaughter. A little later 
on, however, the game commissioners found that the 
herons remaining in Pennsylvania were far too few 
to constitute a pest to fish life, and furthermore, the 
millinery interests appeared to be behind the move- 
ment. Under the new law the milliners were 
enabled to reopen in Pennsylvania the sale of 
aigrettes, because those feathers came from mem- 
bers of the unprotected Heron Family! It 
required a tremendous state campaign to restore 
protection to the herons and bar out the aigrettes; 
but it was accomplished in 1912. 

Hereafter, let no man for one moment be 
deceived by the claim that the very few- and- far- 



138 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

between herons, bitterns and kingfishers that now 
remain in the United States, anywhere, are such a 
menace to fish life that those birds are a pest and 
deserve to be shot. The inland streams of the 
United States and Canada lack fishes because they 
have been outrageously overfished, — wastefully, 
wickedly depleted, without sense or reason, by men 
who scorn the idea of conservation. In Orleans 
County, New York, a case was reported to me of a 
farmer who dynamited the waters of his own creek, 
in spawning time! 

Go where you will, wherever fish still exist in our 
interior waters, and you will not be long in hearing 
stories of fish slaughter and fish waste that will 
amaze and anger you. In view of all the wicked- 
ness that has been perpetrated on the game-fishes 
of our fresh-water streams and ponds, I have no 
patience with any of the stories of great fish 
slaughter by herons, kingfishers or any other wild 
birds. Such stories deserve the contempt of every- 
one who hears them. At this moment, after fifty 
years of wasteful and wicked fish destruction, the 
great and virtuous state of Texas is about to con- 
demn to death the remaining pelicans of her gulf 
coast — because they eat fish! Even a state can be 
both stupid and mean, the same as an individual; 
and to charge to wild birds the fish extermination 
that has been perpetrated by man is both false and 
cowardly. 



PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 139 

Before we leave this section of our subject, I wish 
to add a pointed word of warning. 

There are very many confirmed destroyers of 
wild life who lose no opportunity to charge up to 
other causes the evil results of their own practices. 
For example, the relentless quail-killer will look 
you squarely in the face, and with never a blush 
mantling his cheek, he will tell you "the hard win- 
ters kill more quail than sportsmen do." The 
squirrel-shooter will declare that birds are scarce 
because the squirrels rob their nests and eat their 
young ; and this in a region where now there is only 
one wild squirrel to every ten square miles. 

Do not accept seriously any fantastic statement 
or theory regarding alleged great damages that 
have been inflicted upon valuable interests by wild 
birds or mammals, until indisputable evidence has 
been laid before you. Out in Arizona, the desert 
men say, "Snake stories don't go unless you pro- 
duce the rattles." With us stories of havoc and 
destruction by "pest" birds and "pest" mammals 
"don't go" unless we can see good proof. During 
our late unpleasantness in Congress with the 
feather millinery trade (1913), our opponents very 
strenuously insisted upon their right to import the 
feathers and skins of birds that had been killed as 
"pests." We met that claim, and vanquished it, by 
demanding to be shown any country in the world 
that sends forth a noteworthy commercial feather 
product from birds that have been killed solely 



140 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

because they were pests, and irrespective of the 
feather millinery trade. We demanded to be shown 
a commercial product, from any source, of genuine 
"pest" bird feathers. Nothing of the kind could 
either be shown or described. The hawk, eagle and 
condor feathers that enter the feather markets of 
Europe come from birds that are sought out and 
killed especially for the feather trade. 

The first reply to make to every demand for the 
destruction of wild bird and mammal pests is this: 
"Show me the proof! Give me facts that would be 
regarded as evidence in a court of law; then I will 
believe it, but not before." 

We now come to our third proposition, which 
embraces the wild species that everywhere are so 
destructive to valuable property that they deserve 
to be destroyed, and concerning which there is no 
dispute. 

At the head of this list of evil-doers stands the big 
Gray Wolf or ''Timber" Wolf, strong of limb and 
jaw, insatiable in appetite, a master of cunning and 
the acme of cruelty. The states that still possess 
gray wolves have done well in placing a high cash 
bounty, varying from $10 to $25 on the head of this 
four-footed fiend. At this moment, many a forest 
ranger west of the great plains is on the alert for 
signs that will show the location of the dens of 
breeding pairs of gray wolves, in order that if 
possible the parents may be destroyed before the 
young are born; or, failing that, that the young 



PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 141 

may be destroyed in the spring before they leave 
the den. 

Ever since the range steer took the place of the 
American bison, a relentless warfare has been 
waged against the gray wolf. The hordes of gray 
marauders that once battened and fattened on the 
millions of wasted buffalo carcasses have been 
reduced to scattered fragments. On the plains 
there is to-day perhaps one gray wolf to every 
hundred that were there prior to 1885. The cow- 
boy and the professional wolfer have enormously 
reduced the wolf population; but for all that, it 
seems impossible to exterminate the species, or even 
to prevent the continuous slaughter of stock. The 
doubled values of cattle and sheep have led to 
increased activities in the destruction of wolves, but 
at the same time it has intensified the keen ability 
of the wolf to preserve his own life under most 
adverse circumstances. 

The intelligence of the gray wolf in securing his 
prey, and in avoiding traps, poison, dogs and fire- 
arms, is unsurpassed in anything of flesh and blood. 
The disappearance of the wild game throws the 
subsistence of the wolf-pack upon the ranchman 
and stock-owner. Thanks to the bounty system, 
the total number of wolves now alive in the United 
States is small. In 1912, the rangers of the United 
States Forestry Bureau killed 241 gray wolves, and 
during a similar period the Province of British 
Columbia alone accounted for 518 wolves. 



142 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

The gray- wolf area embraces about three-fourths 
of the entire continent of North America, and it 
includes the entire Rocky Mountain region of the 
United States and the Sierra Madre of Mexico 
down to Guadalajara. Wherever found, the 
proper course with a wild gray wolf is to kill it 
as quickly as possible. While it is quite possible to 
catch gray wolves in steel traps, success in such 
endeavors is very difficult to attain. Poison is the 
best exterminator, but its successful use calls for 
expert knowledge. The best of all methods is to 
destroy the young in their dens, as soon as possible 
after their birth. The destructiveness of the gray 
wolf is concentrated on the young of range stock, 
colts, calves, half-grown cattle and sheep being the 
principal victims. Of wild game, the deer and 
antelope are the greatest sufferers, and to both 
those species the gray wolf is terribly destructive. 

In regions that now are almost destitute of game, 
the gray wolf, when hard pressed by hunger, some- 
times becomes deadly dangerous to man. It has 
been stated that there is not on record in America 
one well-authenticated instance of a human being 
having been attacked and killed by gray wolves. 
Now, however, there are two such cases on record, 
and we believe that the evidence on which they rest 
is true. It is reported that near the close of 1912, 
a mail-carrier serving the lumber-camps above 
Lake Nipigon, about sixty miles north of Lake 
Superior, in the Province of Ontario, was killed 



PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 143 

and completely devoured by wolves. Four large 
wolves were killed by the carrier before he was over- 
powered. This is said to have been the second 
occurrence of that kind in that region, and a reign 
of terror was the result! 

Everything that has been said regarding the 
gray wolf may be repeated regarding the Coyote, 
but in a decidedly minor key. The latter is smaller 
and weaker, cowardly instead of courageous, 
inferior in cunning, and even though far more 
numerous, its depredations are less serious. The 
specialty of this animal is deer and antelope fawns, 
grouse and quail. In the United States its range is 
generally the same as that of the gray wolf. While 
the United States forest rangers were destroying 
241 gray wolves in 1912, they killed 6,478 coyotes, 
and in the same period British Columbia accounted 
for 3,563. 

The good services performed by the coyote con- 
sists in the destruction of prairie-dogs, Franldin 
spermophiles and other burrowing rodents that are 
injurious to land and crops. These services, how- 
ever, are completely overshadowed by the slaughter 
of young calves, colts and lambs. The prong- 
horned antelope often falls a victim to this pest. 
The coyote is an Ishmaelite. Every man's hand is 
against him and he should be killed wherever found 
in a wild state. 

The Mountain Lion of the West, known to us as 
the puma or cougar, also is a destructive, dangerous 



144 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

and intolerable pest. Wherever it is numerous it is 
fearfully destructive to deer and young elk, and it 
must be hunted down and destroyed regardless of 
cost. In California the annual slaughter of deer by 
pumas is said to be enormous. It is the deadliest 
enemy of the big game of every region which it 
inhabits. It kills mountain sheep, elk, deer, and 
every other species of game of attractive size that 
lives within its haunts. In the Yellowstone Park 
so many elk calves were killed by pumas it became 
necessary for Mr. C. J. Jones to procure a pack of 
dogs and regularly exterminate as many pumas as 
could be found. Around the entrance of one puma 
den the hunters found the skulls of nine elk calves. 
During that campaign a large number of pumas 
were hunted down and killed; but for all that, the 
number still remaining in the Yellowstone Park is 
estimated by the Park officers at 100. In 1912 
our forest rangers killed 88 pumas, and British 
Columbia destroyed 277. 

The disappearance of wild game, and the spread 
of stock-raising into the home of the Grizzly and 
Black Bear of the West, very naturally has led to 
the destruction of range cattle by bears, to an 
unbearable extent. It is now a well-known fact 
that if bears are left unmolested and permitted to 
become numerous, they quickly acquire the idea 
that they are immune and grow bold accordingly. 
On such a basis, stock-killing is a quick and sure 
result. While we are unalterably opposed to the 



PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 145 

extermination of species, we believe that dangerous 
and destructive predatory animals must be shot 
down to a point sufficiently low so that they are no 
longer a nuisance that stalks abroad at noonday. 
One grizzly on every one hundred square miles of 
Rocky Mountain territory is sufficient to impart a 
distinctly ursine flavor to the wilderness and main- 
tain the charm that is best expressed by the term 
"wild country." 

In the Yellowstone Park, the grizzly bears have 
become so numerous and aggressive it has been 
necessary, for the safety of the public, to reduce the 
number. This has been done, not by shooting the 
surplus, but by capturing the most offensive ani- 
mals alive and unhurt, in steel cages, and shipping 
them to zoological gardens and parks. We are 
unalterably opposed to the capture of the American 
king of beasts in steel traps, and subjecting him to 
a sordid and ignominious death. For him, any 
other death than by a sportsman's rifle, after a fair 
stalk, is unacceptable. Trapping bears, either to 
destroy them as pests or to kill them for their fur, 
never should be tolerated in any civilized country. 
If wild bears become so numerous as to constitute 
a menace to public safety, a scourge to private 
property and a genuine pest, then let that fact be 
made known in the press, and let sportsmen be 
invited to come in and reduce the ursine population. 
Of course there is no objection to a forest ranger 
hunting down and shooting an objectionable bear, 



146 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

but we strongly object to steel traps and poison. 
It happens, however, that the great American 
sportsman has so thoroughly done his work in 
grizzly- bear slaughter that to-day it is almost an 
impossibility for a tenderfoot sportsman to find an 
unkilled grizzly in any hunting-ground within the 
borders of the United States. When inquirers ask, 
"Where can I go and kill a grizzly in this country?" 
the reply is, "Nowhere!" 

The Lynxes, wherever found, are a pest, though 
not in the class of great pests. Their depredations 
correspond to their size, and are confined chiefly 
to game-birds and small game-quadrupeds. The 
rabbit family is the mainstay of the lynx, and when 
rabbits fail, the lynxes are quickly reduced to a 
state bordering upon starvation. Although it is 
known that a lynx can and occasionally does kill a 
mountain sheep, such occurrences are, we believe, 
extremely rare. An undue abundance of lynxes 
soon could become an intolerable nuisance, but 
owing to the rarity of lynxes as they are found at 
this time, they are almost a negligible factor. 

In farming communities, the Mink, Weasel, 
Skunk, Raccoon, and even the Opossum, all become 
so destructive to poultry as to constitute pests 
that require to be suppressed. I have in my pos- 
session a photograph showing the remains of 
twenty English pheasants that were killed by one 
weasel in one night. Every individual of the five 
species named — mink, skunk, raccoon, opossum and 



PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 147 

weasel — is to be regarded as a perpetual enemy of 
poultry and, unless extenuating circumstances can 
be found, deserves death. It follows most naturally 
that a savage little beast which by disposition and 
weapons is fitted to destroy all kinds of poultry 
will, in wild regions, be equally destructive to valu- 
able bird life, especially those species that live on 
or near the ground. 

Regarding the Red Fooo and his relatives, there is 
an unsettled dispute. For many years this species 
has occupied a place in the class of pests, and on 
that basis his pelt has been demanded. Quite 
recently, in the columns of a sportsman's magazine, 
defenders of the fox have arisen, who stoutly declare 
that to their positive knowledge, based on many 
years' experience, the red fox is not a great de- 
stroyer of game-birds and poultry, as has been 
charged in the indictments against him. Certain it 
is that grouse and quail, and other ground-nesting 
birds, never were so numerous as in the days when 
the foxes of the United States were most numerous. 
It would almost seem as if it is the way of the fox 
to live upon the lame, the halt and the blind among 
upland game-birds, and by catching and consuming 
the weakest to promote the survival of the fittest. 
It is quite certain, however, that foxes are very 
destructive to woodland grouse in winter, when the 
latter are heavily handicapped by deep snow. 

For the game of North America, large and small, 
it has been a fortunate thing that the destruction 



148 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

and disappearance of the fur-bearing animals — 
game-killers nearly all of them — has fully kept 
pace with the general destruction of game. In view 
of the destruction of the wild food supply, it is not 
strange that to-day the wolves, coyotes, pumas and 
bears are compelled to resort to the cattle, sheep, 
horses, pigs and poultry of the farmer and ranch- 
man in order to avoid starvation. 

The birds that now are known to be more 
destructive than beneficial are few in number, but 
fairly conspicuous. Few indeed are the birds of 
North America whose depredations are so pro- 
nounced and so constant that they create a general 
average of wickedness that is intolerable and clearly 
deserving of death. It is a serious matter to con- 
demn a species to death by violence, and American 
naturalists have learned the wisdom of not signing 
death warrants hastily or on insufficient evidence. 
After all has been said, there appear to be only 
seven bird species so totally depraved, and so 
unprotected by mitigating circumstances, that the 
verdict of guilty is unanimous. 

The Sharp- Shinned Hawk, a near relative of the 
falcons, is a keen hunter, a swift flyer and a relent- 
less murderer of small birds. In size it is next to 
our pigeon-hawk and third from the sparrow-hawk, 
the smallest of all. It hunts along fences and hedges 
like a dog hunting rabbits, and pursues song- 
birds into and through their thickets like a winged 
mongoose. Its principal food is song-birds, and 



PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 149 

rarely does it capture a mouse. It is rather too 
small to handle domestic poultry with complete 
success, but it can be very destructive to young 
pheasants and quail. 

A complete list of the contents of 159 sharp- 
shinned hawk stomachs reveals a tale of slaughtered 
innocents that is appalling. Ninety-nine contained 
song-birds, woodpeckers, etc., 6 contained poultry, 
6 contained mice, 5 contained insects and 52 were 
empty. All North America, north of Guatemala, 
constitutes the breeding-ground and hunting- 
ground of the sharp-shin, and wherever found, old 
or young, it should be killed without compunction. 

Cooper's Hawk is the companion in crime of the 
preceding species, and equally deserving of an early 
and violent death. In form and color it bears a 
strong resemblance to the sharp-shin, but it is a 
much larger bird. Being a bird of strong and rapid 
flight, much strength and activity and also great 
boldness, it is well equipped for raiding poultry- 
yards and pheasant-farms, and carrying off almost 
everything except geese, turkeys and large ducks. 
Of 133 stomachs examined, 34 contained poultry 
or game-birds, 52 contained other birds, 11 con- 
tained small mammals, 1 contained a frog, 3 con- 
tained lizards, 2 contained insects, and 39 were 
empty. The game-bird species consisted of 1 
ruffed grouse, 8 quail and 5 pigeons. Altogether, 
21 species of useful birds had been eaten and only 
4 mice, 1 rat and 1 grasshopper. No bird record 



150 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

could be much blacker than this. The Cooper's 
hawk, which inhabits the whole United States, is 
an unqualified pest, deserving of swift and sure 
destruction. 

The American Goshawk, chiefly confined to 
Canada and Alaska, is a wholesale destroyer of 
game-birds, serves no useful purpose, and deserves 
destruction. Fortunately, it is nowhere numerous 
and is rarely seen. 

The Duck-Hawk or Peregrine Falcon, inhabit- 
ing all America north of Chili, is another hated 
destroyer of game-birds and song-birds, with no 
extenuating circumstances save at very long inter- 
vals a lonesome mouse or insect. Each bird of this 
species deserves treatment with a choke-bore gun. 
First shoot the male and female, then collect the 
nest, the young or the eggs, whichever may be 
present. They all look best in collections. 

The Pigeon-Hawk, second from the smallest 
species of our hawks, is fearfully destructive to our 
best beloved song-birds. It kills thrushes, gold- 
finches, vireos, bobolinks, sparrows, swifts and 
many other species. Kill it without mercy! Out 
of 5Q specimens examined, 41 contained song-birds. 
In shooting this dull-gray bird, be careful not to 
kill the beautiful little sparrow-hawk — dull blue, 
bright rusty brown, white, black and salmon color — 
because it is a phenomenal destroyer of insects. 
The sparrow-hawk is probably the most valuable 
of all our hawks, and also the most beautiful. 



PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 151 

The time was when we could hesitate before 
deciding the fate of the Great Horned Owl, but 
owing to the enormous decrease in bird life that 
period has gone by. To-day the horned owl is an 
aerial murderer and robber, and the benefits he 
confers in rat-killing are completely buried under 
a mass of slaughtered song-birds, ruffed grouse, 
quail, pigeons, ducks and other birds. I advise 
every forest ranger to kill every great horned owl 
that he can kill, and thereby save hosts of useful 
birds. In British Columbia the great horned owl 
has been, and still is, a great scourge to the upland 
game-birds — grouse, ptarmigan and quail. The 
game-birds were so abundant that presently the 
owls became epicurean in their tastes and often ate 
only the brains of their prey. Then systematic 
warfare began, and in two years, 1910 and 1911, 
3,139 great horned owls were killed. The provin- 
cial game warden, Mr. A. Bryan Williams, declared 
in his last annual report that since the destruction 
of those owls the grouse had visibly increased. 

The rather small and slender Long-Eared Owl 
should live. He destroys a few sparrows, but these 
are paid for three times over by his slaughter of 
wild mice of many species. Of all owls he is the 
greatest mouser. 

The Short-Eared Owl is in all respects an under- 
study of the long-eared, and deserves similar 
immunity from slaughter, and protection. 

The Barred Owl is as omnivorous as the raccoon. 



152 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

He not only eats mice and other small rodents, 
frogs, lizards, fishes, crawfish, a few sparrows and 
other small birds, but he cheerfully and impartially 
takes in every screech-owl and saw-whet owl that 
he can catch. It is the only owl known to us that 
can frighten small birds in an aviary, induce them to 
dash against the wire netting and actually seize and 
devour them through netting of one-inch mesh. 
The barred owl should be killed, because it is a pest. 

Beyond question, throughout the Rocky Moun- 
tain region, the Golden Eagle is a great pest to 
certain species of large game. The destruction of 
mountain sheep lambs, antelope fawns and moun- 
tain goat kids by this bird is quite serious. For 
this reason, and others, in British Columbia the 
golden eagle is officially regarded as a pest, and 
its numbers have been systematically reduced. In 
1910 and 1911, 102 golden eagles were killed in that 
province, as I believe with entire justice. 

The transactions of British Columbia in destroy- 
ing wild animal pests afford an interesting and 
instructive exhibit. During two years' operations, 
1910 and 1911, there were destroyed a total of 
2,896 gray wolves and pumas and 5,141 coyotes, in 
addition to the horned owls and golden eagles 
already noted. Allowing fifty head of game to each 
gray wolf and to each puma, and ten to each coyote 
(very fair estimates, we think) , the total number of 
game and domestic animals saved each year by the 
killing of those marauders would amount to 191,210 



PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 153 

head. I think that an estimate of one victim per 
week for each adult puma and gray wolf is not 
extravagant. 

In California there is made the same killing esti- 
mate for the puma, fifty victims per year. If this 
is anywhere near correct, then the one hundred 
pumas estimated among the wild animals present 
in the Yellowstone Park must devour nearly 5,000 
head of game each year. 

The extermination of wild-animal pests in na- 
tional, state and private forests is a large subject. 
It is beset with difficulties and perplexities. Owing 
to the frailty of human nature when it carries a gun, 
the Forest Service of the nation and the state is 
deprived of a valuable line of outside assistance to 
which by all rights it is entitled. Outside assistance 
in shooting pest animals often is more deadly than 
the pests themselves. The one thing that a man 
with a gun finds it hardest to resist is temptation; 
temptation to shoot everything that might, could, 
would or should be a "pest" mammal or bird. 
Whenever an unscientific gunner takes the field to 
shoot "pest" hawks, it is time for all hawks to take 
to the tall timber. The assembly of erroneous heads 
that were sent in to Harrisburg for bounties during 
the prevalence of the "fool hawk law" is an ancient 
but still living joke in the Pennsylvania State Game 
Commission. 

Remembering this, the Commission is now sorely 
perplexed by the prospect that offers of fresh 



154 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

bounties for the destruction of "vermin" will lead to 
the slaughter of a great number of quadrupeds and 
birds under cover of the law, by alleged mistakes in 
identification. The secretary of the Commission 
has sent broadcast a stern warning to the effect that 
no mistakes in the hunting of pests will be tolerated. 

The gray wolf has been pursued with great vigor 
and vengefulness, and although an enormous num- 
ber has been killed, the supply seems inexhaustible. 
At times, "Old Lobo" drives a ranchman to 
despair. In all-around cunning and resourceful- 
ness, bears and pumas are mere amateurs in com- 
parison. There is no royal road to any gray-wolf 
pelt, but a $25 bounty is certain to reduce the wolf 
population very effectively. A few years ago, a 
gathering of stock-growers convened in Seattle to 
meet an expert who had been invited and urged to 
come over into Macedonia and instruct the popu- 
lace on the latest methods of wolf destruction. The 
assembly rashly concluded that it was about to 
receive a sovereign remedy, a genuine specific for 
the cure of stock-slaughter. 

When all had been said by the stock-men, the 
government expert announced that the best way 
to destroy wolves was to locate the dens and then 
destroy both old and young. The proletariat was 
greatly disappointed. It had expected a quick and 
sure remedy, and it laughed the expert to scorn. 
But the mistake was its own. There never was any 
reason for the belief that human intelligence could 



PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 155 

devise a sure and certain method for finding and 
killing the most cunning and capable of all Ameri- 
can predatory animals except the wolverine. 

The eradication of the puma from certain dis- 
tricts that it now infests to a deplorable extent is a 
task of immediate urgency, and it should not be 
lost to view because of the wolf question. At this 
moment pumas are a curse to the deer, elk and other 
game of the Yellowstone Park, the Kaibab Plateau, 
on the western rim of the great Colorado Canyon, 
and in southern and southeastern California. The 
puma is very successfully hunted with dogs that 
have been trained to trail it, and this is legiti- 
mate sport in which outsiders may engage with 
safety to the other game. Once popularize it, and 
the doom of the puma is sealed. For all wild- 
animal pests (except bears) that kill fifty deer or 
elk calves per capita each year, we consider fire- 
arms, dogs, traps and strychnine thoroughly legi- 
timate weapons of destruction. For such animals, 
no half-way measures will suffice. 

The rabbit plague in New Zealand and Austra- 
lia, already mentioned, is so well known as to 
require little comment. It is a useful illustration of 
what a seemingly harmless animal can do when 
circumstances enable it to live and breed without 
restraint. The introduction of the rabbit into 
Australia was deliberately done, to furnish sport 
and an additional food supply. 



156 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

"The inhabitants of Austraha," says Dr. Lydek- 
ker, "soon found that the rabbits were a plague, for 
they devoured the grass, which was needed for the 
sheep, the bark of the trees and every kind of fruit 
and vegetable, until the prospects of the colony 
became a very serious matter, and ruin seemed 
inevitable. From New South Wales upwards of 
15,000,000 rabbit skins have been exported in a 
single year, while in thirteen years ending with 
1889, no less than 39,000,000 were accounted for in 
Victoria alone. 

"To prevent the increase of these rodents, the 
introduction of weasels, stoats, mongooses, etc., has 
been tried; but those carnivores neglected the 
rabbits and took to feeding on poultry, and thus 
became as great a nuisance as the rabbits them- 
selves. An attempt to kill the rabbits by an epi- 
demic disease also failed. Wire fences, sometimes 
150 miles long, have been erected to bar rabbits 
from new territory." 

In New Zealand the increase of rabbits in twenty 
years has been so enormous that in some districts 
it has become a question whether the colonists 
should not vacate the country rather than attempt 
to fight the plague. But the fur trade now raises 
the star of hope in Australia. Rabbit fur is now in 
so great demand that about twenty million rabbit 
skins are annually exported from that continent to 
Europe. Rabbit fur is now dyed and sold by fur- 
riers under the following trade names : seal, electric 



PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 157 

seal, Hudson seal, Red River seal, sable, French 
sable, sable coney and seal coney. 

Occasionally during the past twenty years, jack- 
rabbits so greatly increased in Colorado and south- 
ern California that great rabbit drives became 
necessary, in which the rabbits were destroyed by 
wholesale methods. 

Unhappy Australia is now struggling with a new 
pest. About thirty years ago, the European red 
fox was introduced, to establish the noble pastime 
of fox hunting; and the result was an escape of 
foxes that soon began to stock the country. Having 
no natural enemies to contend with except man, the 
foxes soon found themselves in a vulpine paradise. 
They are industriously devouring all kinds of wild 
mammals and birds except the largest species, 
domestic poultry, pigs and lambs, and it is believed 
that they will eventually spread all over Australia. 
The government offers a bounty on fox scalps, but 
the increase of the pest continues. 

In America the English sparrow is now a 
national sorrow. This pest is past eradication, save 
by an effort so great and so costly that no such 
effort ever will be put forth. All Americans 
declare with irritation that "the English sparrow is 
a nuisance, and ought to be exterminated"; but 
there the matter rests. 

And now comes the European starling, a short, 
thick bird of black plumage strongly penciled with 
light-colored streaks, a yellowish beak and a cheery 



158 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

whistle. It flocks around man's habitations, swarms 
in his parks and remains all winter. In the breed- 
ing season it routs the woodpeckers, bluebirds, 
purple martins and other good and desirable birds 
out of the nest-boxes that have been erected espe- 
cially for them, and takes possession. A flock of 
starlings can easily dispossess and drive away 
golden- winged peckers, and have been seen to do so. 
Fortunately, the starling is not a street-gutter 
scavenger, like the English sparrow; but if it con- 
tinues to drive away our woodpeckers and other 
native birds, as it now seems to be doing, its exter- 
mination will be very much in order. 

There is one foreign wild-animal pest that is con- 
tinually knocking at our doors, and whenever it 
obtains a foothold, its presence will spell calamity. 
It is the Mongoose; a small carnivorous mammal 
about as large as a large mink, which finds it home 
in India, Ceylon, Burma and other countries of the 
Orient. Although an animal of small size, its rest- 
less energy, fierce temper, indomitable courage and 
physical activity enable it to vanquish birds and 
some mammals of ten times its own size. 

In its home country, India, the mongoose — now 
known in the nursery as "Rikki-tikki-tavi" — is a 
fairly decent citizen, and it fits into the time-worn 
economy of that region without a jar. Its specialty 
is killing cobras and devouring them. In an evil 
moment, the mongoose was introduced in the 
islands of Barbadoes and Jamaica, to clear out the 



PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 159 

rats that were troubling the cane-fields. In quick 
time the rats were exterminated, and then the 
mongooses ambitiously looked about for more food 
and more worlds to conquer. With cheerful 
impartiality they devoured the snakes and lizards, 
wild birds and poultry, cleaned out every living 
thing that they could catch and kill, and then began 
on the sugar-cane. The last count in this indict- 
ment seems hard to believe, but it is a fact that when 
hard-pressed by hunger the mongoose freely 
devours fruit and vegetable food. 

Up to this date, the mongoose has invaded and 
become a destructive pest in Barbadoes, Jamaica, 
Cuba, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Trinidad, Nevis, Fiji 
and all the larger islands of the Hawaiian group. 
Everywhere its progress is the same — devouring 
rats, snakes, wild birds, small mammals, poultry, 
fruit and vegetables. 

The fierce temper, matchless courage and all- 
embracing appetite of the mongoose would render 
its transplantation into any of the warmer portions 
of America a terrible calamity. In the southern 
states, from the Carolinas to California, and up the 
Pacific coast as far as Seattle, it could live, thrive 
and multiply ; and the slaughter that it would inflict 
upon our wild life, especially quail, grouse and wild 
turkeys, would drive the American people crazy. 

The importation of the mongoose into the United 
States is forbidden by a federal law; but for all 
that, Lascars from eastern ships frequently 



160 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

smuggle them in, in their bags of clothing or inside 
their shirts. Fancy an animal with the murderous 
ferocity of a mink, the agility of a squirrel, the pene- 
tration of a ferret and the cunning of a rat, infesting 
our thickets and barnyards. The mongoose can live 
in the South wherever a rat, raccoon or opossum can 
live ; and not for a million dollars could any one of 
the southern or Pacific states afford to have a pair 
of those little gray fiends imported and set free. If 
such a calamity ever should occur, all wheels should 
stop until the calamity-breeders were caught and 
pulverized. If Herpestes griseus ever finds a real 
lodgment in any state or national forest, or in any 
private forest, the forest rangers will then be called 
upon to fight the worst pest that ever fastened upon 
our country. 

In concluding this subject, we wish to point out 
the fact that on the subject of pests and alleged 
pests among wild birds and mammals, there are 
endless opportunities for differences of opinion. 
The handling of the questions that will arise before 
every forester calls for calm judgment and a judi- 
cial mind that is open to conviction, but is not to be 
swayed by every wave of local resentment or emo- 
tion. In every case of doubt, the young judge must 
bear in mind the wise injunction of Holy Writ, 
which says: "Prove all things; hold fast that which 
is good." 



CHAPTER V 

THE DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN IN 
WILD LIFE PROTECTION 

We now have reached a subject which is the con- 
clusion of the whole matter of wild-life destruction 
and conservation, — the duty of the citizen. Upon 
the response, or the lack of response, to the call that 
now is being made to the intelligent conscience of 
America and Europe hangs the fate of the best and 
most valuable wild life of the world. If that wild 
life is not saved through the initiative and the sacri- 
fices of private individuals, it will not be saved. 

Let us make a cold-blooded analysis of the 
situation. 

We know that throughout all portions of the 
globe that are really occupied by civilized man, or 
his agents, the slaughter of wild life is proceeding in 
wholesale ways and at a fearful pace. 

We know that already a very great many species 
of highly valuable birds and mammals have been 
locally exterminated over immense areas. 

We know that during our own times, a number 
of species have been totally exterminated, actually 
under our eyes. The total list is so long that I have 
not even attempted to give it. 



162 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

We know that the deadliness of firearms and the 
number of firearms are constantly being increased. 

We know that the thirst for the blood of wild 
creatures now amounts to an insatiable rage; a 
"craze" in fact, as well as in name. There are a 
thousand rich men in America, young and old, each 
of whom would willingly go to the gates of hades 
itself in order to find his chosen game. 

Finally, we know that of the millions of men who 
form the army of destruction, not more than 5 per 
cent of them care one iota about our duty to pos- 
terity or the claims of our children and grand- 
children. In the saving of game for posterity, by 
their own volition and unrestrained by law, the 
great majority of men and boys who shoot, includ- 
ing all in America and in Europe, have no more 
mercy or sense of honor toward wild life than so 
many gray wolves of the prairies. 

In the United States there are about 5,000,000 
gunners, game-hogs and sportsmen. In that entire 
multitude I venture to say that there are not over 
2,000 men or boys who by reason of their own high 
principles could be trusted in any country to hunt 
wild game wholly unrestrained by the hand of the 
law, I mention this fact, not merely as a complaint 
against the men I accuse, but because it is a fact, 
and it now is a factor of tremendous importance to 
all those who desire to preserve wild life as a duty 
to posterity. In order to plan our campaign of 
offense against the army of destruction, it is a mili- 



DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN 163 

tary necessity that we should know the composition 
and numerical strength of the enemy. 

As a sort of voucher for the character of my 
statements regarding the army of destruction, I 
desire to state that during the past twenty years I 
have come in personal touch with thousands of men 
who shoot and thousands of real wild-life protec- 
tors. My personal acquaintance with the men who 
kill wild creatures covers the best hunting-grounds 
of two hemispheres, and from this acquaintance I 
have learned the true sentiments toward wild life of 
several thousand men. As this acquaintance has 
progressed, I have met one surprise and shock after 
another. My original, optimistic and too liberal 
opinion of the sentiments of the men who shoot 
game has steadily and rapidly gone down. To-day, 
I know that there are in the ranks of the men who 
shoot game a very few men, — let us be very liberal 
and say 5 per cent, — who are noble-hearted, high- 
minded, awake to their duty toward wild life and to 
posterity, and willing to make real sacrifices in 
order to do their duty. 

But the 95 per cent are utterly contemptuous of 
their duty whenever the saving of wild life involves 
a realj personal sacrifice. Twenty per cent of them 
virtuously stop shooting and hang up their guns — 
when the game is so reduced that there is no longer 
a good bag to be had ! The remaining 75 per cent 
will go right on shooting, down to the very last bird 
of a species, so long as the law permits it! 



164 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

Now, that is a grim and ugly picture. I wish it 
were untrue ; but it is not. Seventy-five per cent of 
the men who shoot game in America, in Europe, 
Asia and Africa are thoroughly sordid, selfish and 
merciless, both toward the game and toward pos- 
terity. As a rule, nothing can induce any of them 
to make any voluntary sacrifices for the preserva- 
tion cause. They stop for nothing save the law. 

The time was when I was proud of being known 
as a sportsman; but that time has gone by, forever. 
The conscientious and duty-doing sportsmen of 
the world are now so hopelessly mixed up with the 
motley array of game-hogs and gunners-at-large 
as to be almost unrecognizable. There are in the 
United States about six clubs of sportsmen to 
which it is an honor to belong, but that is all. 

This ugly sore spot is laid bare in order that the 
real friends of wild life may know the worst, and 
may at the outset realize the painful fact that the 
men who hunt and kill wild game are not preserv- 
ing wild game to-day for any other reason than that 
they may kill it to-morrow. The army of destruc- 
tion will not preserve our birds and mammals as a 
duty to posterity. The people who do not shoot 
have far too long left the protection of our birds 
and quadrupeds to the men who do shoot! As a 
result, look at Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, 
Minnesota and Kansas, — almost gameless ! 

We must make an end to the folly of abandoning 
154 species of our finest birds to the merciless treat- 




/'f*« 



DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN 165 

ment of the men who kill game-birds. Do sensible 
shepherds set wolves to guard their flocks ? Take a 
lantern, like Diogenes, go out, and see if you can 
find a sportsman who voluntarily makes any sacri- 
fice for the good of the birds, or who does more than 
preserve to-day in order to kill to-morrow. See if 
you can find in your city more than five men who 
shoot who will subscribe $50 each in order to pro- 
mote a movement to give the quail remnant of the 
state a five-year close season. Show me the cities 
of the United States in which a campaigner will 
not wear out a dollar's worth of shoe-leather for 
every dollar that he raises by subscription among 
gunners for real wild-life protection. I think the 
total number can be counted on the fingers and 
thumb of one hand. 

The point of this story is that if the remnants of 
the wild life of North America are saved to pos- 
terity, they must be saved by the efforts and the 
sacrifices of men and women who do not kill wild 
creatures. 

We hold that the real men and women of to-day 
owe to posterity a duty in the preservation of wild 
life than can not conscientiously be ignored. The 
wild life of the world is not ours, to dispose of 
wholly as we please. We hold it in trust, for the 
benefit of ourselves, and equal benefits to those who 
come after us. As honorable guardians we have no 
right to waste and squander the heritage of our 



166 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

children and grandchildren. It is our duty to stay 
the hand that strives to apply the torch. 

We received from the hand of Nature a marvel- 
ous continent, overflowing with an abundance of 
wild life. But we do not own it all; and it is not 
all ours to destroy if we choose. Nature was a 
million years, or more, in developing the pictur- 
esque moose, the odd mountain goat and the unique 
antelope. Shall we destroy and exterminate those 
species in one brief century? The young Ameri- 
cans of the year 2014 will read of those wonderful 
creatures, and if they find none of them alive how 
will they characterize the men of 1914? I, for one, 
do not wish in 2014 to be classed with the swine of 
Mauritius that exterminated the dodo. 

The most advanced educators of America are 
awake to the vital necessity of forest conservation. 
The twenty-one forestry schools now in existence 
in our country have for their foundations the neces- 
sity for forest conservation. Educators and states- 
men, and the men of means who support good 
works, all are awake to the vital necessity of syste- 
matic effort in arresting the march of forest destruc- 
tion and providing for the perpetuation of our 
forest wealth. If by neglect of duty we were to 
allow the vandals to sweep off all timber from the 
United States during the present century, we 
would be regarded as monsters. Fifty years hence, 
our children would blush for their parents. And 
yet, in effect, through our mistaken principles and 



DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN 167 

the dominant influence of the destroyers, we are 
now, at this hour, permitting and witnessing the 
annihilation of our game-birds and game-quadru- 
peds, everywhere in the United States outside of a 
very few real preserves. If my iteration of this fact 
is hkely to be regarded as tiresome, it should be 
remembered that only the quick awakening of this 
nation, and the quick application of stern remedies, 
can save the patient. 

Perhaps there are those who believe that the vari- 
ous state game commissions are to be held respon- 
sible for the saving of our wild life. It may be said 
that they have power, they have state funds at their 
command, they are supposed to have the means of 
enforcing the laws. In view of the state game com- 
missions, why (it may be asked) should the duty 
of saving the wild life devolve upon the private 
citizen? Let us answer categorically. 

First. The real business of every state game 
commission is to enforce the laws that it finds upon 
the statute books. All other activities are quite 
secondary. 

Second. Every wise state game commission is 
animated by a desire to do for the wild life of the 
state the very best that it can do under the circum- 
stances, and at the same time assist in securing 
betterments in laws and in law enforcement. 

Third. No state game commission dares go to 
extremes in demanding more drastic protective 
laws, because to do so means incurring the open. 



168 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

active hostility of thousands of gunners who are 
ever ready to fight for their hilling privileges, even 
unto the destruction of their own game commission. 
Any game commissioner who defies that body of 
men, in order to do his duty, takes his official life in 
his hands and must expect to meet his enemies in a 
death grapple before his legislature. 

Fourth, It is only the strongest of the state 
ga7ne commissions, those whose members are 
assured of strong outside support, who dare to 
advocate before their legislatures the drastic meas- 
ure which alone will serve to save the present wild- 
life situation. 

Private citizens and humanitarian organizations 
must not think that all the work and all the fighting 
for the saving of wild life should be done, or can be 
done, by the state game commissions. That demand 
would be unfair and its adequate fulfilment quite 
impossible. The drastic and unpopular measures, 
such as stopping the sale of game, the conferring of 
long close seasons and the stoppage of all hunting 
in the national forests, should originate with outside 
men, who are not open to vengeful assaults by 
gunners, and who can say what they please in sup- 
port of their cause. These independent promoters 
of wild-life protection measures always receive the 
hearty support of their respective state game com- 
missions, but the arrangement saves the latter from 
being converted into targets for universal assault. 

I do not mean to imply that state game commis- 



DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN 169 

sions never take the initiative in securing strong 
measures. Far from it. Very many of the best 
measures now on the statute books were placed 
there through their initiative. Among the fighting 
game commissions of my close acquaintance I men- 
tion particularly, with pride and satisfaction, that 
of Pennsylvania, headed by Dr. Kalbfus and Com- 
missioner John M. Phillips ; the New Jersey Com- 
mission, headed by Mr. Ernest Napier; the Massa- 
chusetts Commission, headed by Dr. George W. 
Field, and the California Commission, led by Mr. 
Ernest Schaeffle, secretary. At this very hour, the 
California Commission and its thousands of sup- 
porters are engaged in a bitter struggle against 
the largest and most shameless body of wild-life 
destroyers to be found in any one state. The 
destroyers, to the number of 30,000 or more, are 
determined to drain the blood of the wild birds of 
California down to the very last drop, regardless 
of the rights of future Californians, regardless of 
precedents set by other states and in defiance of 
the wishes of the vast majority of the people of 
the state. A band of alien-born game-dealers is 
attempting to ride roughshod over the decent peo- 
ple of California, and at the same time destroy one 
of the best state game-laws in the United States. 

Without the active and constant support of 
private citizens, the California Game and Fish 
Commission would long ago have been utterly 
vanquished ; but with that support, it will continue. 



170 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

In the protection of wild life, it seems to me that 
the average citizen does not even begin to realize 
his own power. I know it, and a great many other 
men know it, because we have seen the results that 
have been accomplished by the private citizen on the 
firing-line. If the defenders of wild life can succeed 
in reaching and arousing the private citizen, the 
wild life of our country can even yet be saved from 
the general annihilation that threatens it. The 
appeal for new help must be made to the men and 
women of America who do not go hunting, and who 
do not kill wild creatures! 

Speaking generally, I think that w^e have gone 
with the gunners about as far as we can go. I fear 
that they will concede no more than they already 
have conceded, and the new measures they are 
willing to concede I believe are utterly inadequate 
to the saving of our wild life. As a class and a 
mass, the gunners are unwilling to grant long close 
seasons, of five or ten years, and therefore we must 
secure those long close seasons without their aid! 

We have proven what can be done by turning to 
humanitarians at large — the big-hearted people 
who spend much of their lives in building hospitals, 
endowing schools and caring for poor humanity in 
general. These are the men and women who care 
about posterity and its rights, as well as about the 
needy ones of to-day. It was the 50,000 women of 
the United States, organized and unorganized, who 
rushed the anti- feather-millinery clause through the 



DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN 171 

United States Senate in spite of an opposing 
majority in the dominant party. It was the zoolo- 
gists of the University of California who in 1912 
started the fight to save the birds of California, and 
in 1913 won a substantial victory. 

It was the men of the Camp-Fire Club of 
America who in 1910, as private citizens, went 
before the United States Senate, demanding the 
adoption of three rational, common-sense measures 
for the preservation of our once valuable fur-seal 
industry from total annihilation. It was the final 
adoption of those three measures that did save to 
this nation a national commercial asset, worth 
millions of dollars. But for the action of that 
Camp-Fire Club of private citizens it is absolutely 
certain that by this time the fur-seal remnant would 
have been practically annihilated. 

Assuming that the duty of the private citizen 
toward wild life is conceded, how can that duty best 
be discharged, and how can every unit of interest 
be made effective ? 

In the first place, the citizen must make up his 
mind that a real performance of his duty ^vill 
involve some sacrifices on his part, either in effort or 
in money, or both. There is no royal road to the 
perfect protection of wild life. Results that are 
of far-reaching importance, and that are worth 
while, always involve hard thinking, hard labor and 
the expenditure of money. 



172 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

The first duty of the wild-life protectionist is to 
inform himself adequately regarding the leading 
issues of the day in the protection field. Knowl- 
edge is power, and a protagonist of wild life badly 
informed is like a knightly champion wearing only 
half a suit of armor. Good sources of information 
are your state game commission, the United States 
Biological Survey of the Department of Agricul- 
ture, the magazines for sportsmen, two books 
by Mr. E. H. Forbush of Boston, and another 
book entitled "Our Vanishing Wild Life." Any 
man or woman, anywhere in the United States, who 
is willing to lend a hand but is at loss to know what 
to do, need only declare that willingness in order to 
be advised what cause to espouse. 

The accomplishment of a great reform nearly 
always means the enactment of new laws in the face 
of strong opposition. Every great reform always 
treads on a great many toes; and the owners of 
many of those toes will not only cry out, but many 
of them will fight. A bill to stop the sale of game 
always arouses the opposition of the market- 
gunners, the game-dealers and the hotel and restau- 
rant interests. The game-dealers are natural 
fighters, and in fighting for their selling privileges 
they hire lawyers in abundance and spend money 
liberally. As business men, they know^ how to 
appeal to the business men in any legislature, and 
their opposition is a very serious matter. The way 
to counteract it is to Overwhelm it, in the legislature 



DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN 173 

and before the governor, with appeals and demands 
from the press and from men and women who have 
no selfish interests to serve and no axes to grind, in 
behalf of imperiled nature. Men who are moved 
to leave their mirth and their employment, and 
journey to their state capitol to appear at hearings 
before committees in behalf of the wild life of the 
people at large, always command very respectful 
attention, and in about nineteen cases out of every 
twenty, if the cause of the people is adequately 
represented, the friends of wild life do not appeal in 
vain. 

At this point I wish to offer an observation in 
regard to legislative campaign work. There is 
lobbying and lobbying — two distinct kinds. The 
common variety is that which has an ax to grind, a 
personal interest to promote or protect, a com- 
mercial end to serve. With this brand, many legis- 
lators have little patience, and the ax-grinding 
lobbyist often finds his way blocked by stern laws 
and rules. 

But the lobbyist who goes up for the good of the 
people is in a very different class. His lobbying is 
not only respectable, but honorable; and to him all 
doors are open. He is treated well; always with 
respect, frequently with deference. He has a 
powerful advantage over the man who for the sake 
of making more money is begging that bird- 
slaughter be continued. I think that our clause for 
the exclusion of feather millinery was inserted in 



174 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

the tariff bill partly because of the fact that its 
advocates were the only persons who appeared 
before the Ways and Means Committee of the 
House who were not seeking to serve personal and 
selfish ends! The novelty of that appearance was 
so great that our appeal had to be granted ! 

I have known a few state game commissioners 
and others who, in their early experiences, have 
hesitated to enter legislative lobbies in behalf of 
their measures. To all persons who feel inclined to 
shrink from this line of duty toward wild life we 
may paraphrase an ancient and excellent precept, 
thus : There is no excellence without great lobbying. 
I have taken many chances in various legislative 
halls, and most of all in Congress. I have felt it 
my duty to appear before legislative committees of 
a number of states, and never once have I been 
accused of intrusion, or violation of state rights, or 
of advocating a bad cause. 

" Thrice is he arm'd that hath his quarrel just; 
And he but naked, though lock'd up in steel. 
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted." 

Every forester in the United States should feel 
that lobbying for conservation causes is the very 
highest line of duty in which it is possible for him 
to engage. No man can so well advocate the repeal 
of a bad forest or game law, or the enactment of a 
good law, as the man who comes in personal contact 
with its working effect. Legislators like to have 



DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN 175 

come before them practical men, who know all the 
facts, and who know whereof they speak. I have 
in mind a celebrated case wherein an international 
fishery commission sent to Congress a wrong con- 
clusion. Three hard-handed fishermen of Put-in- 
Bay journeyed down to Washington, taking with 
them a pail of water, three live fish and a section of 
fish-net. With that simple outfit in a five-minute 
demonstration before a Congressional committee 
they upset forever the unwise conclusions of an 
international commission, and the whole subject 
was reopened on a new basis. 

It is impossible for me to state with sufficient 
emphasis the necessity for immediate action and 
quick results in the saving of wild life. The assaults 
that are being made on the forests of the United 
States are in no way comparable with it. At one 
swoop the creation of vast national forest reserves 
arrests the hands of the timber destroyer ; but there 
are no such corresponding reserved areas for wild 
life. Beside the vast extent of the reserved forests, 
the national parks and game-preserves are lost in 
utter insignificance. 

Already a great amount of basic educational 
work for wild life has been done. There are few 
intelligent persons to whom the subject is new. The 
public mind now is so sensitive to impressions 
regarding wild life it is possible to secure, by a few 
months of effort, results that even five years ago 
were wildly impossible. Our task to-day is not the 



176 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

educating of the masses, but the arousing of the 
conscientious citizen to the point of positive action. 

In these days we know not who will be the next 
man to develop into a leader of conservation cam- 
paigns. This being the case, it becomes of interest 
to know what the young conservationist can do 
when the mantle of leadership has fallen upon him. 

The greatest coups are to be made in securing 
the enactment of new laws that produce sweeping 
reforms. To the young leader I would say, never 
choose a trivial cause, but instead, choose each time 
one that is worth while to grown men. It takes but 
little more time to pass a large bill than is necessary 
for a small one; and big men always prefer to be 
identified with big measures. Do not rush to the 
legislature with a demand for a law to permit the 
taking of bullheads with June-bugs in the creeks 
of your township, or to give your county a specially 
early open season on quail in order that your 
brother may try his new gun before he goes back to 
college. Do not propose any local legislation; for 
bills of that species are coming strongly into 
disfavor with lawmakers. 

One determined man who is reasonably intelli- 
gent can promote and direct a movement that will 
secure the enactment of a new law, provided he is 
industrious and sufficiently determined. The man 
who starts a movement must make up his mind to 
follow it up, direct its fortunes, stay with it when 
the storms of criticism and opposition beat upon it. 



DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN 177 

and never give up until it is signed by the Governor 
or the President. A leader must be willing to sacri- 
fice his personal convenience, the most of his pleas- 
ures, and keep at his work when his friends are 
asleep or at the theater. 

The first step in starting a new campaign is to 
raise the fund with which to meet its expenses. 
Expense money is absolutely necessary, or the 
amount of printing, posting, telegraphing and 
traveling will be extremely limited. Good men 
who give their time and gray matter must not be 
expected or permitted to pay their expenses from 
their own pockets. A little later we will have more 
to say on this point. 

A short bill can be drawn by your own member 
of the lawmaking body; but a long one, that 
requires study and research, must be drawn by a 
good lawyer, who must be paid something for his 
time. Every bill should recognize existing laws, 
either to repeal or to amend, and it must be either 
prohibitory or permissive. This means that the 
new law desired must say what shall not be done, 
or else what may be done lawfully, all other acts 
being forbidden. I prefer the prohibitive form, as 
being the more impressive, and also most easily 
provided with penalties. 

As soon as a bill is introduced in a legislative 
body it is referred to a committee, for consideration 
and report; and a favorable committee report is 
highly essential to success. 



178 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

It is at this point that the citizen at large looms 
upon the scene and begins to play his part. The 
leader will ask the committee for a public hearing, 
which will be granted, for a date fixed well in 
advance. Then the leader sends out his printed 
matter, broadcast, and calls upon the people at 
large for support. On the date fixed for the hear- 
ing, a large delegation appears, representing all 
sorts and conditions of men. A list of speakers has 
been carefully prepared and handed to the sponsor 
of the measure. The opposition should be heard 
first, and in nine cases out of ten, the opposition 
will contain chiefly men who have private interests 
to serve, and their attorneys. 

From this point onward, the friends of the 
measure, all over the state or the nation, should 
write to their representatives in the legislature or 
in Congress, stating their views of the bill, — 
always in their own language and never in machine- 
made letters, — asking that it be supported. The 
press must be vigorously invited and urged to help 
the cause, and all necessary facts must be furnished 
in order that the editorial mind may be able to 
judge the case on its own merits. 

The larger the measure, the greater is the cer- 
tainty that it will affect adversely some large com- 
mercial interests, or that it will interfere with the 
special privileges of a large class of selfish persons. 
Every large measure is certain to be opposed by 
numerous enemies. When the time arrives to advo- 



DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN 179 

cate before Congress the conversion of every 
national forest into a national game-preserve, there 
will be a great outcry from the resident hunters 
who for years have been exploiting those forests as 
their private hunting-grounds. Then must the 
People-at-Large, the great, silent, sleepy, but irre- 
sistible mass, arouse, shake off their lethargy, and 
unite in demanding their rights, in behalf of them- 
selves, and posterity. The enemies of conservation, 
w^ho wish to see Nature stripped bare of her 
resources for the benefit of their "constituents," will 
declaim and protest, just as they did against the 
enactment of the federal migratory bird law. But 
they will be overwhelmed, just as its fifteen oppo- 
nents in the House of Representatives were over- 
whelmed in May, 1913, when they attempted to 
block the wheels of the car of Progress on which 
the McLean bill was rolling through the United 
States Congress. That must be our next great 
victory, and in the winning of it, thousands of 
strong college men will be needed on the firing-line. 
Will the men of Yale take the initiative in enlisting 
that contingent, and in helping to raise the flag of 
conservation higher than ever before — so high, in 
fact, that it will make the destructionists dizzy to 
look at it ? 

Let the citizen remember that several great wild- 
life protection causes have been finally won through 
Congress, and through state legislatures, by the 
personal letters of constituents addressed in earnest 



180 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

appeal to their representatives and senators. Any 
cause that can command the support of 20,000 or 
30,000, or 100,000 strong personal letters from 
constituents is backed by a force that is well-nigh 
irresistible. Sometimes "the voice of the people" 
is indeed "the voice of God." In the passage of the 
Lacey bird law, the Bayne law, the McLean- Weeks 
law and the plumage law, the opposition of private 
and commercial interests was in the end completely 
overwhelmed by the tens of thousands of earnest 
letters of appeal and demand that flowed in an 
irresistible tide upon the lawmakers. I wish that 
the college men of America would make clear to all 
persons in their spheres of influence the power of 
the original personal letter from constituent to 
representative. At the same time, it should be 
remembered that "machine-made" letters always 
are detectable; they are worse than useless, and it 
is right that they should be so. 

There is another phase of citizen duty toward 
wild life that I approach with a feeling of hopeless 
despair. It is the raising of campaign funds. I 
present it merely as a matter of form, and not at all 
in the hope of accomplishing even secondary results. 

In all campaigns for the protection and increase 
of wild life, the need for campaign cash is very 
great. I have seen three great causes won because 
each one had an adequate campaign fund. I have 
seen several worthy movements languish and die of 
financial starvation. At this moment I know of 



DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN 181 

three causes of moment that are almost destitute 
of funds. Last winter the war-chest of the defend- 
ers of wild life in Virginia, where a gallant fight 
was being made, was down to $18, until it was 
replenished by the New York Zoological Society. 

The trouble is that very, very few men and 
women, even among the fabulously rich, are willing 
to give anything substantial to the wild-life cause. 
As a result, our cause is financially on a half- 
starvation basis, and seems likely to remain so. On 
this whole continent, only two persons ever have 
given sums for the wild-life cause that require six 
figures to express them. Mr. Albert Wilcox gave, 
in his will, $322,000 to the National Association of 
Audubon Societies, as an endowment fund for its 
work; and Mrs. Russell Sage paid $150,000 for 
Marsh Island, Louisiana, as a permanent bird sanc- 
tuary for the winter use of northern migratory 
birds. To other wild-life protection causes Mrs. 
Sage has given at least $50,000 more. From these 
sums, the cash gifts for wild life fall at one deep 
plunge down to $10,000, and not more than ten 
persons ever have given so much as that sum. 
Perhaps twenty persons have given $5,000 each, 
about forty have given $1,000 each and from that 
the figures rapidly dwindle down to $5, $2 and $1. 

Everyone knows that in war the men in the 
trenches and on the firing-line are not supposed to 
provide the sinews of war that come from the pay- 
master's chest. In civilized wars, the noncom- 



182 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

batants provide the war funds. In our warfare for 
the saving of wild life, the men on the firing-line 
who battle for great new measures usually are com- 
pelled to finance themselves. Much of the time 
that they should spend in harassing the enemy is 
spent in begging, hat in hand, for the few dollars 
that are necessary to pay campaign expenses from 
day to day. 

The trouble is that, as a rule, the men who kill 
wild life sullenly refuse to make any real sacrifices 
in cash for the benefit of the faunas they have helped 
to destroy; and the people who do not kill wild 
creatures are interested in other causes. The 
latter feel that they are not to blame for any of the 
destruction, and they do not understand why they 
should be expected to make sacrifices for wild life. 

Unfortunately, the need of money for campaign 
expenses in behalf of wild life never before has been 
one-half as great as it is now. The destroyers of 
wild life are wide awake to the dangers that 
threaten their killing privileges, and they have 
acquired the habit of furnishing money and hiring 
attorneys to oppose the cause of protection. 

The friends of wild life need money in every 
campaign. They need it to pay the cost of printing, 
postage, telegraphing, traveling expenses, and ser- 
vices that can not be procured for nothing. With 
sufficient campaign funds and reasonably able 
generalship, any wild-life cause can be won ! I urge 
the friends of wild life to acquire the habit of giving 



DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN 183 

money for campaign purposes, in liberal figures, 
and of asking others to give. To beg for a good 
cause of any kind is not only right but honorable; 
for it is ten times more painful to ask for many 
subscriptions than it is to make one subscription and 
thereby purchase immunity. Any man can fight 
for wild life, but it takes a real hero to raise money 
for it by subscription. 

The saving of the wild life and forests of the 
world is a duty that by no means is confined to a 
small group of persons who work for nothing and 
subsist on their own enthusiasm. The saving of 
the fauna of a nation is a national task. It is liter- 
ally everybody's business. It rests upon the shoul- 
ders of the educated and the intelligent, and the 
motives that prompt it are not found in the breasts 
of the sordid and the ignorant. The educated 
people of the United States and Canada now are 
called upon to protect their own from the Goths 
and Vandals of the army of destruction who are 
strangers to the higher sentiments. 

In some of the states of our country, it is worse 
than futile to rely for the saving of wild life upon 
the men who kill. They are devoted to slaughter, 
and it is a waste of time to talk with them. Turn 
we, therefore, to the great body of humane men and 
women who do not go hunting and who do not kill. 

We have a right to demand services for this 
great cause from the educators, the scientists, the 
zoologists in particular; from lawyers and doctors 



184 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

and merchants ; and above all, from editors. Intelli- 
gent people who ignore this cause fall short of their 
duty to humanity and to themselves. The universi- 
ties and colleges, the high schools and the normal 
schools, all have it in their power to exert an enor- 
mous influence in this cause. Think what it would 
mean if 30 per cent of the annual graduates of all 
American institutions of learning should go forth 
well informed on the details of this work, and fully 
resolved to spread the doctrine of conservation, 
far and near! And think, also, what it would 
mean if even one-half the men and women who earn 
their daily bread in the field of zoology and nature- 
study should elect to make this cause their own! 
And yet, I tell you that in spite of an appeal for 
help, dating as far back as 1898, fully 90 per cent 
of the zoologists of America stick closely to their 
desk-work, soaring after the infinite and diving 
after the unfathomable, but never spending a dollar 
or lifting an active finger on the firing-line in 
defense of wild life. I have talked to these men 
until I am tired; and the most of them seem to be 
hopelessly sodden and apathetic. 

While this is equally true of educators at large, 
the fact is they are far less to blame for present con- 
ditions than are many American zoologists. The 
latter have upon them obligations such as no man 
can escape without being shamefully derelict. 
Fancy an ornithologist studying feather arrange- 
ment, or avian osteology, or the distribution of sub- 



DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN 185 

species, while the guns of the game-hogs are roaring 
all around him and strings of bobolinks are coming 
into the markets for sale! Yet that is precisely 
what is happening in many portions of America 
to-day; and I tell you that if the birds of North 
America are saved, it will not be by the ornitholo- 
gists at large. But fortunately there are a few 
noble exceptions to this ghastly general rule. 

The people of America who have money to give 
away to causes for the betterment of humanity 
should consider the campaigns that are being made, 
and that should be made, to save the remainder of 
our wild life for the benefit of mankind at large. 
This cause is entitled to a share of betterment 
funds, and it should not be compelled to live on the 
husks and crumbs that fall from the million-dollar 
tables of other causes. The sight of scores of causes 
and institutions struggling with undigested wealth, 
while the wild life of the world is being swept away, 
and its defenders are working on a starvation basis, 
is fairly maddening. 

With a fair amount of campaign money, the wild 
life of the world could be saved: but the giving of 
money to that cause is not fashionable. Is it because 
the individual glory to be derived from it is too 
small ? There are in all the world only three endow- 
ment funds for the benefit of wild life. One con- 
tains $340,000, another, $51,205 and the third, 
$5,000. Perhaps by the time the wild birds and 



186 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

beasts are all gone, and it is entirely too late, some 
one will devote a really large sum to salvage work. 

Before leaving this branch of our subject, I 
desire to reveal one fact that may be useful. 
The college-graduate-with-a-keen-conscience never 
knows when a public need will leap upon his shoul- 
ders and settle there, to be dislodged only through 
personal effort in the line of imperative duty. He 
never knows when he will be seized and impressed 
into service by a cause. The chances are that 
the men of the forest schools will be driven by 
conservation causes. 

It is a popular idea that to solicit funds by sub- 
scription is a painful task. Carried out beyond 
two digits, it does become so. Under ordinary cir- 
cumstances, there is no calling more honorable than 
soliciting funds for good causes. The solicitor has 
no occasion to apologize because he is asking. It is 
the solicited who apologizes when he is unable to 
respond. During the past five years I have raised 
much wild-life money by subscription, and I have 
received scores of letters (with checks enclosed) 
thanking me for having given the writers an oppor- 
tunity to join in good work for wild life! Write a 
strong circular, state the case clearly and ask with 
brisk confidence that the person addressed will bear 
his share of the general burden. In a thoroughly 
good cause, a strongly worded printed circular, 
sent under seal, is a good method. For separating 
the sheep from the goats, there is nothing equal to 



DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN 187 

the raising of funds for wild-life protection. It is 
a blood test to which only the red-blooded and the 
high-minded ever respond. 

The greatest of all obstacles in the way of the 
conservator of wild life and forests is the deadly 
American spirit of restless and heedless wasteful- 
ness. The American continent has been developed 
by men who, time after time, settled down, robbed 
the soil of its fertility, then moved on westward to 
new lands. The American national spirit is for 
quick, wasteful conquest, not calm and patient con- 
servation. It is our way to cut down, slash up, kill, 
lay waste, get rich quick, — and a fig for posterity! 
Our rich men strive to leave great fortunes in cash 
to their children, but they rarely reforest or restore 
wild life. That is too slow for them. 

The forest champions of America now are mak- 
ing a Herculean effort to instill into the American 
mind the idea of the systematic replanting of de- 
nuded forest lands: but it is like rolling a huge 
stone up a steep hill. Quite recently I journeyed 
through several hundred miles of southern pine 
forests, always watching for signs of systematic 
reforestation, but not once did I see a pine, young 
or old, that clearly appeared to have been planted 
by the hand of man. In the denuded forest areas 
of Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia, 
nature was bravely struggling to restore what man 
had greedily destroyed, but not once did I see a 



188 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

single acre on which nature was being assisted by- 
man. 

None are so Wind as those who will not see. It 
is impossible to place ideas mechanically within 
empty minds. Sometimes the inertia of ignorance 
is as fixed and immovable as the foundations of 
Mount Washington. At other times, it slowly 
yields to persistent education. Just how many 
generations are necessary to transform a confirmed 
tree-cutter into a true forest conservator remains 
to be seen. 

The preservation and increase of the forests is 
a very different matter from the salvage of the birds 
and beasts. Man and nature, jointly or severally, 
can replant a denuded forest, and the lapse of time 
will bring the renaissance. With forests, there is a 
modicum of time available in which to act. With 
wild life, it is a case of now or never. A fauna once 
destroyed can not be brought back! The destroyers 
of wild life are so omnipresent, persistent and 
relentless that the defenders and preservers must 
act at once, or very soon it will be hopelessly too 
late. No power on earth can repopulate China with 
the wild species that were hers when she had forests, 
and before the era of extermination. 

Of the many blighting influences that bear down 
upon wild life, and promote its destruction, one of 
the most serious is local disregard for protective 
laws, and the disloyalty of juries, and sometimes 
of judges, also, to their sworn duty. In the western 




< 

< 
o 
in 
Pi 



in 



a ^ 



C/3 f^ 



o 

g 




3 






'5 


f^ 




.2 


H 


i- 


a 


O 


S 


c6 
2^ 


Pi 


o 


-M 


H 


4J 

be 




Pi 


.s 


c 


t3 


^ 




o 


8 


1 


^ 


c 


in 


H 
^ 


c3 


O 


< 


C 


be 


u* 


1 


m 


o 


OJ 


tC 


H 




aT 


>J 




a 


^ 


«<-i 


Tl 


O 


cS 




c 


■S 



DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN 189 

third of the United States, and especially on the 
so-called "frontier," it is a common occurrence for 
a sympathetic jury of neighbors and friends to 
acquit a red-handed violator of the game-law by 
saying: "Not guilty! He needed the meat." 

Sometimes a judge on the bench calmly elects to 
turn loose without punishment a man who should 
pay the full penalty for his misdeeds and his con- 
tempt of the law. The latest and most disappoint- 
ing case occurred in Key West, Florida. Three 
men were caught in the act of raiding the protected 
egret rookery at Alligator Bay, on the west coast of 
Florida. By the expenditure of great efforts and 
much public funds, the offenders were finally taken 
to Key West, a distance of about one hundred 
miles. It is stated that the judge before whom they 
should have been tried kindly advised that the 
accused men be set free. Recognizing the utter 
futility of bringing the men to trial, the game 
wardens and the prosecuting attorney had no 
recourse but to abandon the case. The men were 
set free; and now it is reported that they have 
announced their intention to "clean out" that 
rookery in the coming nesting season. 

Any community which tolerates contempt for law, 
and law-defying judges, is in a degenerate state, 
bordering on barbarism; and in the United States 
there are literally thousands of such communities! 
The thoroughness with which one lawless individual 
who goes unwhipped by justice can create contempt 



190 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

for law and demoralize a whole neighborhood is 
both remarkable and deplorable. That way lies 
anarchy. In such a community, any upright man 
who boldly denounces lawlessness and upholds the 
majesty of the law is not only the best citizen of that 
community, but he is also a public benefactor. 

About 60 per cent of the American people are 
like sheep — always ready to follow the boldest 
leader and be swayed by the strongest man. This 
being true, the duty of the good citizen to openly 
and insistently demand the observance of the law 
is, in every lawless community, quite as impera- 
tive as his duty to cast his ballot on election day. 

One determined man who is right can face 
without fear one hundred who are wrong. Such a 
man has the right to demand the support of all 
good citizens. Were I a game warden, or a forester 
with a game warden's authority, I would, as my 
first act, print and post a proclamation calling upon 
all men of lawless tendencies to obey the law, and 
also calling upon all good citizens to give me their 
active support in securing obedience to the law. 

In Putnam County, New York, in 1913 we saw a 
county-wide vote-selling industry of many years 
standing and great popularity absolutely stamped 
out through the moral courage, determination and 
aggressive industry of one private individual, Mr. 
Thomas M. Upp, who accomplished his task almost 
unaided, save by the local newspapers. 

A lawless community, whether in New York or 



DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN 191 

in Alaska, is to all good citizens a source of irrita- 
tion, a public nuisance and a danger that reqviires 
abatement. That abatement should be peaceable 
if possible, but forcible if necessary. If education 
and appeal can not work the necessary reform, then 
the stern execution of the law is the next recourse. 
It is high time that sneering at game laws and game 
wardens should be regarded as intolerable, and 
sternly suppressed; for contempt for law usually 
breeds serious trouble for some one. 

When left wholly to himself, savage man does 
not inflict useless wholesale slaughter upon the wild 
beasts and birds; but in the ranks of civilized men 
there are degenerates who love slaughter and pro- 
mote it with joy and exultation. If it happens to be 
quite useless, no matter! At all events, it makes a 
thrilling story. 

Henceforth, our hope for arresting the efforts of 
the slaughterers must rest upon the hitherto silent 
majority of men, and women also, who abhor 
slaughter, and do not kill. They outnumber the 
army of destruction at least 9 to 1. Their poten- 
tial influence is beyond the reach of calculation. 
They can do for wild life well nigh whatever they 
choose. The time has come when they must be 
called upon to take up their share of the white 
man's burden, and bear it to the goal. No man who 
cares a pin's price for the heritage of his children 
can remain indifferent to the cause of wild-life 
preservation or forest conservation. Each man of 



192 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

conscience may be permitted to take his choice of 
three kinds of tasks, three species of burdens. They 
are labor, publicity or money; and he who chooses 
one of these, and bears it hke a man, may claim 
immunity from the other two. 

It occurs to me to insert here a word of advice to 
every forester and teacher of foresters. Many a 
sportsman will say: "I have no occasion to aid your 
cause. I contribute annually, in the form of a fee 
for my hunting license." 

Now that plea is absolutely hollow. The sports- 
man who pays annually the magnificent sum of $1, 
or even $50, for a local license to hunt is merely 
contributing to the pay of wardens to protect his 
game from the other gunner until he himself can 
reach it, and kill it ! That is all. That endless chain 
of saving to-day and killing to-morrow does not 
increase the wild life of a state ; not in the least. On 
the contrary, that is the great American process of 
extermination according to law! 

To the men of Yale, I repeat at the end what I 
said at the beginning: Noblesse oblige! The nobil- 
ity conferred by a university or college or high- 
school education brings with it solemn obligations 
which no high-minded citizen can ignore. Some of 
these obligations trend toward distressed wild life. 
Only personal effort can discharge them to the satis- 
faction of a properly sensitized conscience. Do not 
think to discharge any of your obligations to man 
or to nature by telling some one else what to do. 



DUTY AND POWER OF THE CITIZEN 193 

Every year, about a thousand men who have been 
jarred, virtuously seek to salve their consciences 
by writing to me, and pointing out what I should 
do next! Such men are a weariness to the flesh. 
In sixty seconds a child in wild-life protection can 
block out tasks that would keep an army of men 
busy for an entire year. We can do such a thing 
now, in about twenty-five words, thus: 

Have Congress enact a law making every na- 
tional forest a hard-and-fast game preserve, with all 
hunting forever prohibited, save of predatory 
animals. 

As every human heart knoweth its own bitter- 
ness, so does every state of the American nation 
know its own sins of omission and commission 
respecting the wild life within its borders. I know 
that they know, because the black list has been 
printed in a book, and sent to each member of each 
legislature. Much as has been done in wild-life 
conservation during the past five years, the amount 
that remains to be done is appalling; and the shame- 
less repealer of good laws, like the poor of Holy 
Writ, we have with us always. 

It is high time for the great universities and col- 
leges of our country seriously to enter upon the 
work — aye, let me say the drudgery, for that it is — 
of wild-life conservation. The majority of our 
zoologists are engrossed in charming zoological 
studies while the everyday birds and beasts of their 
country are being swept away. As a class and a 



194 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

mass, they are a doubtful asset. The few excep- 
tions only prove the rule. 

Turn we, therefore, to the open-eyed, open- 
minded general educators and general students, and 
lay before them the appeal of the wild. Shall all 
our best wild life be swept away, until nothing 
remains save noxious insects, rats and mice? Shall 
our forests, our orchards, gardens and grain-fields 
be presented bodily to the insect world? Shall the 
dignified chase of deer and bear, the wild turkey 
and ruffed grouse, degenerate, as it has in Italy, to 
the popping of robins, sparrows and bobolinks? 
Already our sweethearts and wives are wearing 
skunk-skin and rabbit-skin furs, where once they 
wore sable, otter and beaver. We are presenting 
annually to the insect world about $500,000,000 
worth of our valuable products. Does this appeal 
to the thoughtful mind, or not ? 

The facts and figures that I have endeavored 
to place before you are no figments of a fevered 
imagination. They are incontestably true. The 
conclusions to be drawn from them are inexorable. 
The saving of our wild life is not an academic cause, 
or an optional study. It is a burning question of 
the market-basket and the dinner-pail. The great 
question to-day is: Will the American people now 
rise to the occasion, and prosecute this cause to its 
logical conclusion, — the real conservation of our 
valuable wild life? 






be 


tf 


c 


H 


^ 


H 




Q 


<*; 




en 


b 


« 


o 


O 




n2 




0) 


o 




PJ 


'3 


o 


t 



<! IS 



CHAPTER VI 

PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES AS FACTORS IN 
CONSERVATION 

BY FREDERIC C. WALCOTTi 

A request from Dr. Hornaday to contribute 
anything intended to further the protection and 
propagation of wild Hfe in this country should be 
taken as a command. When it was suggested that 
I add a chapter to his Yale lectures to outline the 
work accomplished by individuals and private asso- 
ciations in establishing game refuges and sanctu- 
aries in the United States, I accepted from sheer 
enthusiasm for the subject, realizing fully my limi- 
tations, but trusting that my brief report on what 
has been accomplished may inspire similar efforts 
in others. 

A man without a fad is hardly fit for human 
society. A man with a good wholesome fad often 
becomes quite independent of the very society which 
he benefits through his enthusiasm, and there are 
times when the call from the city to the game pre- 
serve is even more imperative, and the problems 
more absorbing, than those of the farm. 

1 On the subject of this chapter, Mr. Walcott is particularly well 
fitted to write — by study and research, wide observation, practical 
experience, and above all, keen interest in, and sympathy for, wild 
life and its preservation. — W. T. H. 

Illustrations from photographs by the author. 



196 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

Many of our American fads become little less 
than manias, and all such are quickly dropped. Too 
much motion is little better than lost motion. The 
rich man who must live near New York or Boston 
takes up farming, seriously; and when he has fin- 
ished fertilizing with gold dollars the sterile acres 
of his collection of New England deserted farms, 
he has paid the price of the richest farm or fruit 
land in California, and he has very little in the end. 
The moment the golden stream ceases to flow his 
land reverts to steeplebush, hardback, gray birch 
and sumac. Much of this land is admirably suited 
for wild life and, if left alone, or encouraged in its 
wild habit, will generously do its share toward pro- 
tecting and increasing the wild game of this and of 
other countries, for the ultimate benefit of man- 
kind. Let us then consider the state and private 
game preserve as a means of increasing our wild 
life, our food supply, and at the same time utilizing 
waste places that now are of little value to anyone. 

Take the state of Connecticut as an example. 
Although situated in the center of the most popu- 
lous district of the United States, with an area of 
approximately three million acres, about one-third 
of this, or one million acres, is utterly unsuited for 
agricultural purposes. It is either marshland, 
second-growth hardwood, or rough, wild pasture. 
Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire have 
many areas of the same general character — thickly 
populated, but dotted everywhere with deserted 
farms and waste acres. 



PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES 197 

State Game Preserves. — Comparatively few of 
our states have made any effort at the systematic 
propagation and preservation of game, and fewer 
still, it would seem, have accurate records of the 
amount of land within their borders devoted to 
private preserves. There is still less information 
regarding the acreage wholly unsuitable for agri- 
cultural purposes, that might be devoted to state 
game preserves. With a view to beginning a per- 
manent record of such statistics, the American 
Game Protective Association some months ago 
sent out to the authorities of each state cards con- 
taining a list of questions. 

The responses were far from satisfactory, both in 
the number of replies received, and in the amount of 
information contained therein. That was, however, 
at least the beginning of an important and neces- 
sary work. The returns received show that Cali- 
fornia, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Kentucky, 
Missouri, New Jersey, New York and West Vir- 
ginia have state game-farms, and that on these the 
species of birds most successfully reared is the 
ring-necked pheasant. Other game species men- 
tioned are wild turkey, valley quail, Hungarian 
partridge, Mexican quail, bob-whites, Canadian 
geese, mallard and black duck, wood-duck, golden 
and silver pheasant, rabbit, elk and deer. 

In California, since the establishment of the 
game-farm, 4,097 ring-necked pheasants have been 
distributed, 1,053 wild turkeys, 450 pheasant eggs 



198 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

and 884 turkey eggs. Iowa has distributed 700 
ring-necked pheasants. Connecticut has distrib- 
uted 400, but in the present season (1914) she has 
raised 6,000 of these birds. So far the output of 
New Jersey's game-farm is 3,500 pheasants, and it 
is encouraging to note that in its first year this farm 
succeeded in raising (under the general super- 
vision of Commissioner Ernest Napier) 4,400 ring- 
necks, 400 quail, 35 wild turkeys, 5 Canadian geese, 
180 mallards and 20 deer. New York's farm so 
far has stocked that state with 10,000 ring-necked 
pheasants and distributed 45,500 eggs ; while West 
Virginia has produced 200 ringnecks, 100 Hun- 
garian quail and 3,000 ringneck eggs. 

All of the states agree that the propagation 
methods adopted are increasing the visible supply 
of game, and several suggest an increase in the num- 
ber of private preserves to reinforce the game- 
breeding. Many officials complain that the space 
allowed for propagating purposes is too limited. 

E. C. Hinshaw, state fish and game warden of 
Iowa, in his reply says: "I am at this time establish- 
ing game reserves in every county throughout the 
state, wherein no hunting will be allowed for five 
years. All birds liberated will be placed in them, 
and given every possible protection from hunters 
and vermin, and will also be provided with food 
and shelter if necessary, during extremely hard 
weather." 

The State Board of Fisheries and Game at Hart- 






-a 




c 




ed 




^ 




Cfl 








'"^H 




OJ 




P. 




« 




(U 




^ 




OJ 




a 




eS 




be 




-M 


O 


a 








C4-1 


n 


be 
.5 


S 


c6 




a; 


u 


^ 


tc 


02 


H 




O 


Si 


z 


y 


5 


g 


H 




s 


•la 


fe 


8 



PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES 199 

ford, Connecticut, declares that dogs should not be 
allowed to roam at will during the breeding season, 
and that cats, when found at large, should be 
treated as vermin. It also contends that the de- 
struction of certain hawks should be encouraged; 
with which all bird-protectors will agree. 

Pitfalls of which the beginner in game-breeding 
is warned are: overcrowding and its resultant dis- 
ease, black-head, quail disease, roup, gapes, egg- 
eating by adult birds, vermin (if eggs are hatched 
by hens ) , inadequate regulation of temperature and 
moisture in incubators, destruction of young birds 
by rats, unsanitary conditions generally, failure to 
provide fresh ground in breeding, and predatory 
foxes. 

Information as to the space available for game 
preserves, or even the area now actually used as 
such, is difficult to obtain. California tells us it has 
nearly 2,000 square miles, or 1,280,000 acres, of 
fresh-water ponds and lakes, and nearly 1,000 miles 
of coast-line. In addition to the above, it has 
nearly 2,000 square miles of preserves. Connecti- 
cut has 50,000 acres, including private and public 
lands. Add a generous approximate acreage from 
several of the other states interested in propagation, 
and the total, when compared with the acreage of 
the United States, is relatively insignificant, com- 
pared to even a partial hst of Scottish moorlands 
advertised in the London Times of July 3, 1914, 
for lease during this shooting season — a total of 29 



200 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

moors aggregating 235,000 acres, with a season's 
yield of 13,500 brace of grouse and 287 stags, 
together with several miles of trout and salmon 
streams. 

If the states that already show a healthy interest 
in the better protection of their game should now 
throw into service the unused acreage they well 
could spare, we would have breeding-grounds in 
comparison with which even these of Europe would 
seem small. Here is a list of available lands which 
experts estimate certain states could afford to use 
for game propagation on a commercial basis : 

Connecticut .... 1,000,000 acres. 

New Jersey .... 2,007,000 acres. 

West Virginia . . . 10,000,000 acres. 

Utah 28,320 square miles. 

South Dakota . . . 15,000,000 acres. 

New Mexico .... 2,000,000 acres. 

(Already preserved for private use.) 

Montana 25,000,000 acres. 

Minnesota .... 7,000,000 acres. 

Maine 5,000,000 acres. 

Georgia 500,000 acres. 

New York contains 800,000 acres already in 
private preserves in the Adirondacks alone, and a 
much larger area is owned and controlled by the 
state. 

Nearly every state has a forest, fish and game 
commission, some of the states have park commis- 
sions, and all of the eastern states have boards of 
education. Clearly, it seems to be the duty of these 



PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES 201 

boards and commissions to cooperate in utilizing 
these wild lands for the benefit of the people at 
large. This is to be accomphshed by reforestation, 
to protect the water supply; by stocking the woods 
and water with intelligently selected birds, mam- 
mals and fish; and by building state roads to and 
through reserved tracts, that they may become 
accessible as free camp-sites and pleasure resorts to 
conserve the health of the people and supply 
another source of healthful pleasure and recreation 
for those with moderate incomes. 

We must not forget what has been done and is 
being done in this direction. It is important that 
all the departments of conservation should work in 
the closest harmony with each other, to prevent 
duplication of investment and labor. Even though 
the conservation laws of many states are in urgent 
need of reform, still we have made, and are making, 
marked progress. 

If space permitted, it would be interesting and 
helpful to discuss the methods employed on the vari- 
ous game-farms, and analyze the results of game- 
distribution in each state ; but the chief purpose of 
this article is to appeal to the imagination of the 
man who, as owner of a large or small tract of 
semi-wild land, should be contributing substan- 
tially toward the increase of the supply of wild hf e 
that in general is so rapidly vanishing. Although 
the work done by some of the states is already 



202 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

important, it should be supplemented by the owners 
of private preserves. 

There is little danger that we in the United 
States will fall into the error that England has 
made in allowing three-fourths of her land to be 
owned by one-fourth of her population. Neither 
is it likely that we shall become a nation of sports- 
men to the same extent that the English have. 
But if by state and individual effort we can, in the 
next generation or two, increase our song-birds, 
our game-birds and water-fowl, as has been done 
in England, the economic results to the consumers 
of farm products, in the lower prices of game food 
and the love of nature that must accompany an 
interest in and knowledge of these things, will prove 
among our important national assets. 

The Beginning of Private Game Preserves in 
America. — From the earliest colonial times there 
have been game preserves in this country, both of 
the fenced and unfenced types; and there are 
records of estates attempting to stock with English 
pheasants, European gray and red-legged par- 
tridges, extending back more than a hundred years. 
Perhaps the most interesting among the early 
game preserves was Bohemia Manor in Cecil 
County, Maryland, where Augustine Hermann 
established, in 1661, a walled deer-park of consider- 
able size. The game preserves of the early period 
were found chiefly in Virginia and Maryland, and 
to a lesser extent in the Atlantic States to the south 



PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES 203 

and north, where the English royalists and other 
wealthy foreigners had founded estates. There 
were no early game preserves in New England, 
doubtless owing to the temper of the colonists. 

The Atlantic coast from New Jersey southward 
was originally the best preserved section of Amer- 
ica. As a matter of custom the farmers and 
planters of the southern states have reserved the 
shooting on their lands for themselves and their 
friends, and that system still is in vogue, except 
that in many instances the owners of the lands have 
leased the shooting rights to wealthy sportsmen. 
In the Carolinas, for example, hundreds of thou- 
sands of acres of quail lands are leased to individ- 
uals and clubs, a large part of whose membership 
is drawn from the northern and western states. 
Clubs and individuals have also acquired the wild- 
fowl shooting-rights along the bays, sounds and 
rivers of the Atlantic coast, and to an equal extent 
the best localities on the Pacific coast, chiefly in the 
great state of California. Along the northern bor- 
der of the United States, particularly on the Great 
Lakes, many of the best wild- fowl marshes are simi- 
larly controlled, and there has also been extensive 
development of preserves for the shooting of wild 
fowl throughout the Mississippi River states and 
westward to the Pacific coast. 

Important Private Game Preserves in the 
United States, — In 1858 Judge John Dean Caton, 
who subsequently wrote an authoritative work on 



204 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

"The Antelope and Deer of America," established 
a deer park near Ottawa, Illinois. Here Judge 
Caton made a highly valuable study of American 
big game in captivity. 

In 1886 the late Austin Corbin began fencing 
in his game park near Newport, New Hampshire, 
including within it the farm which had been his boy- 
hood home. This park is the largest private fenced 
preserve in America, containing within its area 
about 27,000 acres of wooded upland country 
diversified by occasional cleared areas which once 
were hill farms. It is estimated that there have 
been as many as 4,000 big game animals in this park 
at one time, including buffalo, wapiti, deer and wild 
boars. The native white-tailed deer are naturally 
the most numerous. 

Blue Mountain Forest Park, as it is called, was 
established as a hunting-preserve. It has had the 
good fortune to have associated with it, for several 
years, the New Hampshire naturalist, Ernest 
Harold Baynes, with whose interesting studies the 
public is familiar through his published articles. 

The largest fenced preserve in New York State 
is the park owned by Edward H. Litchfield of 
Brooklyn, near Tupper Lake, in the Adirondacks, 
which comprises in its area about 10,000 acres. Mr. 
Litchfield has stocked this preserve with many 
species of American big game animals, and also wild 
boar. 

Another interesting preserve of this type is that 




T3 
C 
O 

a 



a; 
> 

.s 

CO 

•a' 
I 



PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES 205 

of Mr. C. F. Dieterich, who for more than twenty 
years has had about 3,000 acres under fence at Mill- 
brook, Dutchess County, New York. Mr. Dieter- 
ich successfully introduced German hares and has 
also made interesting experiments with roe deer, 
which now seem thoroughly acclimatized. 

Mr. Chester W. Chapin's preserve is in Sullivan 
County, New York. The late Dr. W. Seward 
Webb had a large tract of forest land fenced at his 
Nehasane Park in the Adirondacks. William 
Rockefeller also experimented with exotic deer at 
his Bay Pond preserve in the Adirondacks, and 
George J. Gould at one time had a herd of elk at 
his place near Arkville in the Catskills. As far 
back as 1902, as a result of a computation made by 
the State Forest, Fish and Game Commission of 
New York, there was a total of 791,208 acres of 
land included in game preserves in the Adiron- 
dacks. Most of this land, however, was not fenced, 
but simply posted by the owners against public 
shooting, as they desired to have the exclusive privi- 
lege of taking the deer, ruffed grouse and trout 
native to the region. 

In recent years a marked development has 
occurred in a type of preserve where game is not 
only protected but propagated. It is interesting 
to note that while many of these preserves are 
founded for the purpose of sport, there is an appre- 
ciable number where scientific or sesthetic objects 
are the governing factor. One of the first and 



206 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

most noteworthy of the preserves belonging to an 
incorporated association was that of the Blooming 
Grove Park Association in Pike County, Pennsyl- 
vania, established in 1871, where, in addition to the 
native grouse and other game-birds, hundreds of 
pheasants are shot each year by club members. The 
Clove Valley Rod and Gun Club of Dutchess 
County, New York, is another successful example 
of this type. It was the first organization to profit 
by the new "Bayne law," providing for the sale of 
mallard ducks reared in captivity, and marketed 
according to law. In 1912 this club reared and 
marketed about 4,000 mallards, at a net profit of 
approximately $2,500. 

One of the earliest attempts at systematic propa- 
gation of game-birds in this country was made by 
Mr. Rutherford Stuyvesant in 1887, at his place 
called ''Tranquillity," in Allamuchy, Warren 
County, New Jersey. Mr. Stuyvesant's preserve 
consisted of 8,000 acres, and his success was very 
largely due to the expert assistants he secured from 
Scotland. A brief review of the work accomplished 
by Mr. Stuyvesant will be interesting, as he was in 
a sense a pioneer in this country in systematic 
game-bird rearing. 

Donald McVicar, who had been head game- 
keeper for the Duke of Leinster, Kildare, Ireland, 
in 1887 brought over from England for Mr. Stuy- 
vesant 500 ring-necked pheasant eggs. From these 
he reared only about 70 birds. Eggs are quite apt 



PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES 207 

to be rendered infertile by shipping long distances. 
The second season 65 live birds were brought over 
from England for breeding stock. In a few seasons 
the annual hatch was brought up to about 4,000 
pheasants. One year 500 live quail were brought 
from the South, and set out in the fall in small wire 
coops. They were fed regularly and wintered well, 
and in the spring they were liberated. A great 
many birds were reared by this stock, but practi- 
cally all of them left "Tranquillity" before the next 
winter. 

In 1891 part of the preserve was enclosed for 
deer, white-tailed, mule and wapiti, which were 
liberated and did well for several years. 

An experiment was made of crossing American 
bison bulls with Galloway cows ; but nineteen cows 
died calving, and the experiment was given up. 

In the early nineties a beaver colony was started, 
which proved successful. The offspring of this 
colony are now breeding in open territory in New 
York State, without adequate protection. 

The ruffed grouse, native to the Tranquillity 
district, increased rapidly on account of the per- 
sistent trapping of vermin, and the ring-necked 
pheasants apparently did not molest them or dimin- 
ish their numbers. The ring-necked pheasants keep 
to the open woods and fields, and to some extent 
apparently drive the grouse deeper into the woods, 
but beyond this do not interfere with them. 

One of the most important contributions of this 



208 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

preserve has proved to be the men that McVicar 
brought over with him, Adam Scott, Duncan 
Dunn, Donald Monroe, Neal Clark, and his son, 
A. G. McVicar, all from Inveraray, Argyleshire, 
Scotland. These men have greatly advanced the 
development of private preserves in eastern United 
States. 

In Canada, the Province of Quebec has adopted 
a system of leasing crown lands that has resulted 
in the creation of a number of large shooting and 
fishing preserves. The provincial law limits to 200 
square miles the extent of territory that may be 
held by any one club, and three dollars per square 
mile per annum is the minimum price charged for 
shooting privileges. The Megantic Club, which 
owns or controls 125,000 acres of land partly in 
Quebec and partly in Maine, is one of the oldest 
and most representative clubs of this type. 

Charles C. Worthington of New Jersey has for 
many years maintained one of the largest and most 
successful bird refuges in the country and has 
recently offered his 80,000-acre tract to the state of 
New Jersey to be held by the state as a permanent 
game refuge. He has been so successful in breeding 
white-tailed deer that at one time he reported a 
surplus of about 1,000 head. 

Another notable instance of bird protection and 
propagation is Mr. Henry Ford's 2,100-acre farm 
and bird sanctuary near Detroit, Michigan. Mr. 
Ford has encouraged the "farmers' best friends" to 




C 



tn 


J3 


tf 




H 




Eh 


xn 


Pi 


C 


< 


eS 


p 


Cfl 


o* 


b3 

0) 




^ 


o; 


O^ 


1^ 


o 


h 




^ 


■^ 



—I c 
0) .-- 
en *:; 

a c 

CD -t-> 

o 
o 



PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES 209 

help him by setting out shrubs and erecting nesting 
boxes in every spot congenial to the birds. He is 
one of the most efficient enthusiasts in conserving 
bird life in order to lessen the damage to crops by 
insects, which the United States Department of 
Agriculture estimates amounts to $800,000,000 
annually. He entered very actively into the cam- 
paign for the passage of the federal migratory bird 
law, and he is one of the founders of Dr. Horna- 
day's Permanent Wild Life Protection Fund. 

The experiment station of the American Game 
Protective and Propagation Association is at South 
Carver, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The preserve 
contains 6,000 acres of land, including sixteen fresh- 
water ponds, where deer, ring-necked pheasants, 
mallard, wood-duck, quail and ruffed grouse are 
being reared for distribution among the members of 
the Association to encourage the extension of 
private preserves. 

The game breeders' association, formerly of 
Wading River, Long Island, and now at Sparrow- 
bush, New York, has made extensive experiments 
with pheasants, ducks and quail. Last season they 
gathered 4,000 eggs from 170 mallard ducks and 
hatched 2,500 ducklings. 

The Woodmont Rod and Gun Club, in the 
mountains of the western part of Maryland near 
Harper's Ferry, has accomplished excellent results 
in breeding the wild turkey and quail. 

Dr. J. W. Whealton, of Chincoteague Island, 



210 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

Virginia, has probably been more successful in 
raising Canada geese than anyone else in the United 
States. He has had much experience in raising 
water-fowl, is a careful observer and has been most 
helpful in advising beginners. 

In 1913 Mrs. Russell Sage purchased, through 
Messrs. Ward & Mcllhenny, the whole of Marsh 
Island, Louisiana, about 100 miles west of the 
mouth of the Mississippi. This is one of the most 
important winter feeding-grounds for water-fowl 
in the United States, and long has been a favorite 
resort for market-hunters. Mrs. Sage has offered 
this great bird sanctuary to the United States 
Government as a gift, to be kept always as a bird 
refuge, and in due time it undoubtedly will be 
accepted. At present it is being guarded at the 
expense of Mrs. Sage. 

An announcement has just been made of a pur- 
chase of 85,000 acres of marshland near the mouth 
of the Mississippi in Louisiana at a cost of approxi- 
mately $225,000, by the Rockefeller Foundation. 
Mr. E. A. Mcllhenny of Avery Island, Louisiana, 
brought this tract of land to the attention of the 
Rockefeller Foundation. The tract is only a few 
miles from Marsh Island, above referred to, and it 
is one of the most celebrated winter homes and 
spring breeding-places for land birds and water- 
fowl. 

Colonel Anthony R. Kuser has maintained for 
several years at his home in Bernards ville, New 



PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES 211 

Jersey, a large aviary for pheasants and has suc- 
cessfully reared in captivity a great many different 
species. Colonel Kuser has always been an enthu- 
siast in game propagation, and in addition to the 
work he has done for the state and the New York 
Zoological Society, he is now developing a large 
private game preserve near High Point, New 
Jersey. 

The Audubon Societies of the United States are 
ably administered by a group of enthusiastic and 
successful men and women. They have caught the 
spirit of that pioneer worker, Mr. William Dutcher, 
who founded the National Association, and they 
should receive the loyal support of the entire coun- 
try in their crusade against bird enemies. One of 
the most destructive of these enemies is the immi- 
grant from Southern Europe, whose Sunday bag 
is too often filled with our most useful and sweetest 
songsters. 

The most effective remedy is the instruction in 
natural history by our public schools, which is 
creating in the minds of our future citizens a 
realization of the economic and gesthetic value of the 
birds. 

The Ethics of the Aviary. — The love of all wild 
animals is growing apace in this country, and with 
it is growing a dislike for everything that is cruel 
in the confinement or treatment of animals. The 
indiscriminate keeping of caged wild birds and 
animals should be discouraged as much as the indis- 
criminate collecting of eggs and song-birds. 



212 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

The pinioned caged birds and water-fowl are 
beautiful things to look at, and the aviary and 
flying cage are interesting, but the first cost of the 
plant is large, and often the owner, becoming tired 
of this form of amusement, or disgusted with the 
sight of wild birds closely confined in unnatural sur- 
roundings, decides to give his pets the freedom they 
long for, or confine his efforts to only such varieties 
as may be liberated, or raised in a state of semi- 
domestication. 

The zoological societies should carry on experi- 
ments in propagation, where the results can be 
carefully tabulated and made available for the 
public. 

Wherever anyone feels disposed to maintain a 
private aviary and permit the public to view the col- 
lection upon stated occasions, it becomes an impor- 
tant adjunct to the education of the public. This 
method has been initiated with conspicuous gener- 
osity and success by Mrs. Frederic Ferris Thomp- 
son with her extensive aviary at her country home, 
"Sonneberg," in the suburbs of Canandaigua, New 
York. 

The tendency even in the zoological parks is, or 
should be, to get away as far as possible from arti- 
ficial conditions of life, by building large flying 
cages, large runways for the animals, and letting as 
many species as possible fly or roam at large within 
the main enclosures. 

The zoological societies of this country should 






^ ^ 




o +^ 




S "^ 




02 O 




•~ -M 




cn «M 




^-^ 




^ « 




C -13 




•M -M 




a 




o 




^ .M 




-^-^ 




w 2 
s 2 




-a ^ 




C T3 




ce 1 




-a be 




c c 




B 0- 




M 




'^ B3 




G 




-Tj <4-l 


w 


^ o 


o 

Q 




VI 






- O 


%£ 


^ -C 


o 


^ 4J 


o 


J2 J2 


CQ 


VI 




CC &£ 


M 


1 


a: 


h 


s ^ 




c 












J3 S 




-S Sd 




fc. 




OJ 








en eg 

11 






eS 




a'S 




-^ =* 




y Ejo 




S c 




XJ ;:: 




-i^ 




'« ^ 

i S 



o 



PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES 213 

cooperate to the fullest extent with the state and 
private preserves to encourage their development, 
and furnish, practically at cost for services and 
expenses, a consulting expert to enable the begin- 
ner to start intelligently, avoid serious mistakes, 
correct unavoidable errors, prescribe against sick- 
ness and help enforce sanitary conditions by empha- 
sizing at all times the importance of the great cardi- 
nal principle, hygiene. The New York Zoological 
Society is already doing much along this line. 

The Response of Wild Fowl to Man's Protec- 
tion, — It is far more interesting to tame a wild 
bird by coaxing it to feed on your window-sill every 
morning than it is to look after a thrush that is 
eating his heart out in a small cage as he watches 
through the bars of his prison the chickadees on the 
window-sill. 

It is this growing — not humanizing, but animaliz- 
ing — instinct that is turning us with something akin 
to disgust away from the ill-smelling, poorly kept 
cage collections of the often misguided individual 
enthusiast to the free out-of-door range, where the 
birds that have been migrating over those acres for 
countless generations are glad to drop down out of 
the sky and feed, eager to accept protection from 
their most deadly enemy, man. 

Practical Suggestions. — It is astonishing what 
can be accomplished in two or three seasons from 
the smallest beginning, provided a few fundamen- 
tals are observed. A successful game preserve and 



214 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

bird refuge can be made on almost any land 
unsuited to agricultural purposes, that is partially 
covered with trees, either virgin forest or second- 
growth hardwood, or wild pasture overgrown with 
bushes and containing some fresh water, preferably 
a stream with pools or small ponds, and situated in 
the vicinity of a river running north and south, the 
favorite route of migratory birds. These condi- 
tions can be found almost anywhere in New Eng- 
land, in any of the states on the Atlantic coast and 
in many states bordering large rivers, such as the 
Hudson, Savannah, Potomac, Mississippi, Mis- 
souri, Rio Grande or Sacramento. They are also 
to be found in many portions of our very extensive 
lake frontage. A wooded island is of course ideal, 
because on such areas the vermin pest can be so 
easily controlled. The following table illustrates 
the marked effect of systematic killing of vermin 
at a private preserve in England : 

Vermin 

(Killed between the seasons of 1903 and 1904.) 

Rats 5,959 

Stoats 270 

Weasels 271 

Hedgehogs 541 

Rooks 304 

Jays 364 

Magpies 2 

Jackdaws 39 

Cats 154 

7,904 



PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES 215 

Game 

1903 1904 

Pheasants 943 1,509 

Partridges 790 4,774 

Woodcock 19 27 

Hare 462 2,236 

Snipe 3 1 

Wood-ducks (Mallard) . 12 

Pigeons 5 38 

Deer 46 

Fawns 30 

Wild sheep 2 

Peacocks 1 

Rabbits 15,346 18,619 

Increase chiefly due to trapping of vermin. 

Bounty of 1 penny per rat to everyone except keepers. 

This record was made on a leased preserve after 
the place had been neglected for several seasons. 

The most marked increases occur in the partridge 
and hare, which are not raised by hand, showing 
that the increase is chiefly due to the reduction of 
vermin. 

There is a fascination about letting semi-wild 
land slowly and methodically revert to its original 
state, and in encouraging one's land to respond to 
the call of the wild. It costs only a small portion 
of the amount required to run a farm, it has fewer 
worries, and the making of a preserve for birds, 
water- fowl or mammals, whether it is to be a refuge 
for song-birds, as all preserves become willy-nilly, 
or to supply the market with game at the prevailing 



216 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

fancy prices as a reasonably lucrative enterprise, is 
interesting and satisfying beyond all description. 

The readiness of nearly all wild animals to accept 
man's proposals to protect and partially feed them 
is amazing. It appeals wonderfully to one's sense 
of fair play to find a flock of wild geese meeting 
you more than half-way by staying with you and 
rearing their brood as long as you give them a little 
corn at the same time each day ; and the knowledge 
that your own wild ducks decline to go south, when 
literally thousands of their wilder friends come and 
go each spring and fall, warms the cockles of your 
heart. 

As an illustration of the intelligence of wild 
water-fowl and the quickness with which they learn 
to take advantage of protection that is offered, I 
might cite an incident that was told me by that 
keen sportsman and ardent lover of wild life. Lord 
William Percy. 

It seems that in the north of England, not far 
from Alnwick Castle, Lord William's home, lives 
a gentleman named Grant, who while offering 
every protection to all wild fowl on his place never 
has allowed any shooting. A flock of wild gray 
mallards came annually to Mr. Grant's place, and 
as they were never molested they became as tame as 
barnyard fowl, and would come to the kitchen door 
to be fed. In the open, however, these birds were 
even more shy than ordinary wild fowl, and Lord 
William stated that the professional gunners came 



PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES 217 

to know this flock, which gradually increased to 
four or five hundred, on account of their wariness 
and would make no attempt either to stalk or decoy 
them in their flight up and down the coast. 

Description of the Author'' s Game Preserve at 
Norfolk, Connecticut. — A brief description of a 
preserve of 4,000 acres started three years ago by 
Mr. S. W. Childs and the writer in the north- 
western part of Connecticut may be of interest, to 
show how quickly wild life responds to protection, 
and to indicate some of the stumbling-blocks and 
cardinal principles in the making of a preserve. 

As I sit here writing on the porch of a house 
overlooking a typical Connecticut pond about 
three-quarters of a mile long and half a mile wide, 
a poodle pointer imported from Germany and an 
English setter are standing by my side, quivering 
with excitement as they watch eight ring-necked 
pheasants feeding on a small piece of lawn a few 
feet away. 

Canada geese are making a great uproar by the 
shore of the pond below as they chase back and 
forth, flapping their wings, apparently trying to 
encourage their goslings, now at the end of August 
nearly full grown, to rise and fly. 

Wild black mallards and wood- ducks that bred 
this year on the place, and several hundred hand- 
reared gray mallards, all able to fly, are to be seen 
in the air and on the water, and a herd of fifteen 
native Connecticut white-tailed deer, with four 



218 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

fawns born this spring, instead of the cows that 
have called that ground their home for the last fifty 
years, are browsing in sight of the house, among 
some young white birches that are growing in a 
typical wild pasture lot of about seventy-five acres. 

There are three other ponds on this place, and 
last spring several broods of black ducks were 
reared on each. Two of the ponds are natural 
water-holes, and the other two are artificial. The 
former were reclaimed by putting in small stone 
dams where the weather of years had destroyed the 
handicraft of pioneer lumbermen. The latter are 
streams dammed at points where narrow breaks in 
the ground permitted of short, inexpensive timber 
and earth structures. 

Between two and three thousand black ducks 
drop into the home pond each fall and remain until 
late December before going farther south ; and each 
fall and spring, from forty to fifty wild Canada 
geese stay with our geese several days, for food. A 
snow goose caught in a fish net on Long Island 
Sound last fall, and sent to us after being wing- 
clipped, has become perfectly tame, and is now 
flying about as naturally as she did in the wild 
state. A wing-tipped cackling goose, wounded at 
Horn Point, Virginia, near Currituck Sound (the 
only record of this bird on the Atlantic coast) , was 
brought to the preserve in January, 1913, and 
liberated. The broken wing soon healed, allowing 
her to fly perfectly, and this bird has twice declined 




c 
o 
a. 



be 



P 

be 
C 

a 

3 

o 



PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES 219 

to migrate with the larger wild flock. She has 
mated with a Hutchins gander, and has succeeded 
with her charms in enticing a Canadian gander 
from his mate, to whom he had been faithful for 
eight years ! 

We have liberated between 800 and 1,000 ring- 
necked pheasants of our own raising each season, 
and now expect to raise from 1,500 to 2,000 gray 
mallards every season, for the market. Gray 
mallards bring in the market from $3 to $3.50 per 
pair and it costs from 75 cents to $1 to bring a 
mallard to maturity. The eggs sell at from $15 
to $20 per hundred. 

Pheasants are much more difficult to raise than 
ducks, but enough could be sold each year to 
decrease materially the cost of running the pre- 
serve, provided the law of the state in which the 
birds are raised permits the sale of hand-reared 
game. The New York state law is excellent in this 
respect, and other states should allow the sale of 
hand-reared game, in order to encourage their 
increase by artificial methods and create a new 
industry. 

The overflow from private preserves nearly 
always stocks the neighboring woods and fields, 
affording excellent sport. The pheasant is largely 
an insectivorous bird, preferring the open field and 
the edge of the wooded areas to the dense woods, 
and probably interferes very little with our native 
ruffed grouse. He wanders far afield, however. 



220 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

and unless the land round about is suited to him, he 
will leave for the more congenial environment of the 
river bottom and the low-lying farms. 

One of the great desiderata for American game- 
rearing is a manual of instruction adapted to cli- 
matic conditions as found between Virginia to the 
south and New Hampshire to the north. Such a 
manual, to be really useful, must be written by a 
man who has had a long and successful experience ; 
and when such a manual is written, it will give a 
tremendous impetus to game propagation. It must 
cover the following subjects: 1. Selection of a 
preserve for birds and mammals. 2. Exterminat- 
ing vermin, such as the bay lynx or bobcat, skunk, 
fox, weasel, domestic cat, rat, crow, red squirrel, 
great horned owl, sharp-shinned and Cooper's 
hawk. 3. Natural foods for pheasants, quail, 
grouse and surface-feeding ducks; methods and 
conditions for planting. 4. The care of adult birds, 
with formulae and regulations for feeding. 5. The 
care and feeding of the young. 6. The manage- 
ment and feeding of deer. 

The Commercial Side of Breeding Game in Cap- 
tivity, — The private game preserve and bird sanc- 
tuary under reasonable regulations should be 
encouraged in every way by the states for the 
following reasons : 

1. To supplement the work now being done by 
many of the states and to create a large overflow for 
the benefit of the people at large. 



PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES 221 

2. To increase the insectivorous birds, whose 
economic value has been so convincingly set forth 
by Mr. E. H. Forbush in his book, "Useful Birds 
and Their Protection." 

3. To increase the supply of meat and thus 
bring it within the reach of more people. The com- 
parative prices of game between this country and 
England during the last century reveal the rapid- 
ity with which our wild life is vanishing. 

Excerpt from "The Game Market of To-day/' Henry 

Oldys, United States Department of Agriculture, 

1910 





New York, 


New York, 


London, 




1763 


1910 


1910 


Partridge,^ each. 


$.24 


$1.75 -2.00 


$.16-.25 


Grouse,* each. 


.30 


1.50 


.24-.36 


Mallard, each. 


.25 


.621/2 


.24-.36 


Teal, each. 


.12 


.371/2- .50 


.16-.24 


Snipe, per dozen. 


.30 


2.00 -3.00 


.08-.16 


Quail, per dozen. 




3.00 -4.50 





Ring-necked pheasant. New York, 1913, wholesale $4 to $4.50 

per pair. 
Ring-necked pheasant, London, 1913, wholesale $1 per pair. 
1653— Whole deer $1.20. 
1765 — Whole deer 17.50 (maximum price). 
1910 — Whole deer 43.73 (maximum price wholesale). 

4. To add interest to the reclamation and re- 
forestation of practically worthless acres which 

1 Probably means ruffed grouse in New York. 

2 Heath-hen in New York markets in 1763; in 1910 this would be 
ruffed grouse. 



222 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

should be exempt from taxation while being 
improved, under the German system of taxing the 
crop after the improvements have been completed 
and lumbering begins. 

In short, the salvation of our wild life that is so 
rapidly vanishing can only be accomplished by the 
game farm and the game refuge, state and private ; 
and everyone owning even a small tract of semi- 
wild land should help the cause of conservation. 

Let each one do his share to restore the balance 
which man has so rudely and persistently upset. 
Man ruthlessly destroyed the larger carnivora until 
the smaller species, less useful and less dangerous 
to him, increased abnormally, thereby destroying 
the bird life so essential in keeping in check the 
insect life. If we reduce the number of small car- 
nivora to normal, the bird life will quickly respond, 
the injurious insect life will promptly decrease and 
useful vegetation will increase correspondingly. 

Let the waste areas be peopled with the animal 
and bird life of a hundred years ago. Let the 
forests, now still, echo with the whistle of the deer 
and the bugle of the elk, our waterways answer to 
the honk of the wild goose, and our farms will 
resound to the chorus of myriads of song-birds! 
Then, when the "red gods call," we can go; and we 
shall be a stronger, hardier, better race through our 
appreciation and enjoyment of the wild life we have 
helped to reinstate. 



A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MORE RECENT WORKS ON 

WILD BIRDS, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO 

GAME PRESERVES AND THE PROTECTION 

AND PROPAGATION OF GAME 

BY FREDERIC C. WALCOTT 



In a general way I have tried in compiling this bibliography 
to include only the more recent works, and works that are not 
restricted in the ground they cover to any small section of 
territory or limited number of species. Where exception has 
been made to these two principles, I have felt that there was 
justification. 

The books are classified by countries. Capital letters fol- 
lowing certain titles indicate call number of books at New 
York Public Library. 

The World 

Four Centuries of Legislation on Birds. W. G. Clarke. Anti- 
quary, London, 1909. C. A. 

England 

A Gamekeeper's Note Book. Owen Jones and Marcus Wood- 
ward. E. Arnold, London, 1910. M. Y. O. 

Birds and the Plumage Trade. S. L. Bensusan. Nineteenth 
Century, London, 1913. D. A. 

The Migration of Birds. T. A. Coward. University Press, 
Cambridge, 1912. Q. M. E. 



224 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

Aviaries and Aviary Life. Wesley T. Page. The Avian 

Press, Ashbourne, 1912. 
A History of Fowling. H. A. MacPherson. David Douglas, 

Edinburgh, 1897. 
The Solution of the Mystery of Bird Flight. George L. O. 

Davidson. Nineteenth Century and After, London, 1912. 

D. A. 
Lost and Vanishing Birds. C. Dixon. J. MacQueen, 

London, 1898. Q. M. D. 
The Complete Wildfowler. Stanley Duncan and G. Thome. 

G. Richards, Ltd., London, 1912. M. Y. T. 
Studies in Bird Migration. Wm. Eagle Clarke. Gurney & 

Jackson, London, 1912. Q. M. E. 
The Flight of Birds. F. W. Headley. Witherby & Co., 

London, 1912. Q. M. D. 
The Brent Valley Bird Sanctuary. W. M. Webb. Selborne 

Society, Brent Valley, England, 1911. Q. M. D. 
British Diving Ducks. J. G. Millais. Longmans, Green & 

Co., New York, 1913. 
Natural History of the British Surface-Feeding Ducks. J. G. 

Millais. Longmans, Green & Co., 1902. 
The Natural History of British Game Birds. J. G. Millais. 

Longmans, Green & Co., 1909. 
The Mammals of Great Britain and Ireland. J. G. Millais. 

Longmans, Green & Co., 1904. 

North America 

The American Natural History. W. T. Hornaday. Fireside 

Edition, 1914. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. 
Color Key to North American Birds. F. M. Chapman. 

American Museum Natural History, New York, 1903. 
Key to North American Birds. Elliott Coues. Dana Estes & 

Co., Boston, 1903. 
The Bird. C. William Beebe. Henry Holt & Co., New 

York, 1906. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 225 

Distribution and Migration of North American Shorebirds. 
Wells W. Cooke. Government Printing Office, Washing- 
ton, 1912. Q. G. S. 

Chronology and Index of the More Important Events in 
American Game Protection, 1776-1911. T. S. Palmer. 
Government Printing Office, Washington, 1912. Q. G. S. 

North American Birds Eggs. C. S. Reed. Many illustrations. 
1904. 

Eastern North America 

Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America. F. M. Chap- 
man. D. Appleton& Co., New York, 1895. Q. M. Q. 

Greenland 

Die Vogel der Arktik. Band IV, Lieferung 1, pp. 81-288. 
Gustav Fischer, Jena, 1904. A detailed synopsis of 
Arctic bird life. 

Canada — General 

Catalogue of Canadian Birds, giving their nesting habits. 
J. and J. M. Macoun. Government Printing Bureau, 
Ottawa, 1909. 

Canada — Provinces 

Labrador. — Birds of Labrador. C. M. Townsend and G. M. 
Allen. Proceedings, Boston Society of Natural History, 
XXXIII, pp. 277-428. 1907. 

Manitoba. — Fauna of Manitoba. E. T. Seton. British Asso- 
ciation Handbook, Winnipeg, 1909. 

Ontario. — Check List of the Birds of Ontario. Warwick, Beas 
& Rutter, Toronto, 1900. 

United States — General 

The Destruction of our Birds and Mammals. W. T. Horna- 
day. New York Zoological Society, 1898. 



226 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

Migratory Movements of Birds in Relation to Weather. 

W. W. Cooke. Government Printing Office, Washington, 

1911. Q. M. D. 
Economic Value of Predaceous Birds and Mammals. A. C. 

Fisher. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1909. 

V. P. E. 
American Game Bird Shooting. George Bird Grinnell. 

Forest and Stream Publishing Co., New York, 1910. 

M. Y. T. 
Birds of Town and Country. H. W. Henshaw. National 

Geographic Magazine, Washington, D. C, 1914. 

K. A. A. 
The Policeman of the Air: An Account of the Biological 

Survey of the United States Department of Agriculture. 

H. W. Henshaw. National Geographic Magazine, vol. 19, 

pp. 29-118, Washington, 1909. 
Our Vanishing Wild Life. W. T. Hornaday. New York 

Zoological Society and Charles Scribner's Sons, New 

York, 1913. M. Y. D. 
Game Bird Enemies. D. W. Huntington. Independent, vol. 

64, p. 500, New York, 1908. D. A. 
The Sport of Bird Study. H. K. Job. Outing Press, New 

York, 1908. 
Birds as Weed Destroyers. S. D. Judd. Year Book, United 

States Department of Agriculture, 1898. 
Encouraging Birds Around the Home. Frederick H. Ken- 

nard. National Geographic Magazine, vol. 25, pp. 315- 

344, Washington, 1914. 
Raising Deer and Other Large Game Animals in the United 

States. David E. Lantz. United States Department of 

Agriculture, Washington, 1910. 
Five Important Wild Duck Foods. W. L. McAtee. United 

States Department of Agriculture, 1914. 
Our Vanishing Shorebirds. W. L. McAtee. United States 

Biological Survey, Circular 79. Q. G. S. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 227 

Plants Useful to Attract Birds and Protect Fruit. W. L. 

McAtee. Year Book, United States Department of Agri- 
culture, 1909. Q. E. I. 
The Game Market of To-day. Henry Oldys. Government 

Printing Office, Washington, 1911. V. T. B. 
Directory of Officials and Organizations concerned with the 

Protection of Birds and Game. United States Bureau of 

Biological Survey, 1913. Q. M. I. 
Importation of Game Birds and Geese for Propagation. T. S. 

Palmer and Henry Oldys. United States Department of 

Agriculture, Washington, 1904. 
Methods of Attracting Birds. Gilbert H. Trafton. Houghton 

Mifflin Co., Boston, 1910. Q. M. I. 
National Reservations for the Protection of Wild Life. T. S. 

Palmer. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1912. 

Q. G. S. 
Private Game Preserves and Their Future in the United States. 

T. S. Palmer. Government Printing Office, Washington, 

1910. Q. G. S. 
Progress of Game Protection. T. S. Palmer. United States 

Biological Survey, 1910. Q. G. S. 
Revealing and Concealing Coloration in Birds and Mammals. 

Theodore Roosevelt. American Museum Natural History, 

New York, 1911. P. Q. A. 
How to Destroy Rats. David E. Lantz. United States 

Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 369, September 

3, 1909. 

Birds That Hunt and Are Hunted. Neltje Blanchan. Double- 
day, Page & Co., New York. 

Among the Water Fowl. H. K. Job. 

Wild Ducks. Capt. W. C. Gates. 

Fox Trapping. A. R. Harding. 

Ornamental Water Fowl. Hon. Rose Hubbard. 

Saving the Ducks and Geese. Wells W. Cooke. National 
Geographic Magazine, March, 1913. 



228 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 

United States — Sections 

Mississippi Valley. — Report on Bird Migration in the Missis- 
sippi Valley in the Years 1884 and 1885. W. W. Cooke. 
Bulletin No. 2, Division Economic Ornithology, United 
States Biological Survey, Washington. 

New England. — History of the Game Birds, Wild-fowl and 
Shore Birds of Massachusetts and Adjacent States, with 
Observations on Their Recent Decrease, Also Means for 
Conserving Those Still in Existence. E. H. Forbush. 
Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, Boston, 1912. 

Pacific Coast. — Game Birds and Game Fishes of the Pacific 
Coast. H. T. Payne. Newspaper Publishing Co., Los 
Angeles, Calif., 1913. Q. M. D. 

Southeast. — Birds Known to Eat the Boll Weevil. Vernon 
Bailey. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1905. 
Q. G. S. 

Miscellaneous States 

Alaska. — National Bird and Mammal Reservations in Alaska 
in Charge of the United States Department of Agriculture. 
Circular 71. Washington, 1910. Q. G. S. 

Colorado. — The Practical Value of Birds. Junius Henderson. 
University of Colorado, University Extension, Division 
Natural History, Series No. 1, Boulder, Colo., 1913. 
P. Q. A. 

Massachusetts. — Special Report on Decrease of Certain Birds 
and Its Causes, with Suggestions for Bird Protection. 
E. H. Forbush. Massachusetts State Board of Agricul- 
ture, Boston, 1908. 

Useful Birds and Their Protection, 1907. E. H. Forbush. 

New York. — The Economic Preservation of Birds. S. L. 
Bensusan. Contemporary Review, New York, 1914. 
D. A. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 229 

The Economic Value of Birds to the State. F. M. Chapman. 

New York State Forest, Fish and Game Commission, 

Albany, 1903. Q. M. I. 
Birds of New York. Elon Howard Eaton. New York State 

Education Department, Albany, 1910. 
Birds in Relation to Agriculture. F. H. Hall. New York 

State Agricultural Department, Circular 56. J. B. Lyon 

& Co., Albany, 1912. V. P. Z. 
Ohio. — EiFect on Birds of Establishment of Park and Reser- 
voirs at Youngstown, Ohio. George L. Fordyce. Wilson 

Bulletin, Chicago, 1914. Q. M. A. 
Oregon. — Some Common Birds of Oregon with Notes as to 

Their Economic Relation to Man. W. L. Finley. N. S. 

Duniway, Salem, 1908. Q. M. Q. 
Pennsylvania. — Recommendations as to Trapping and Care 

of Quail. Use of Poison for Vermin and Crows. Joseph 

Kalbfus. Harrisburg Publishing Co., Harrisburg, Pa., 

1908. Q. M. I. 
Wisconsin. — Anon the Reasons for Bird Migration : A Favorite 

Food Theory. A. C. Burrill. Bulletin Wisconsin Natural 

History Society, Milwaukee, 1912. P. Q. A. 

Germany 

Sanctuaries for Birds on German Coasts. Selborne Magazine, 
vol. 24, pp. 45-49, London, 1913. M. S. Y. 

How to Attract and Protect Wild Birds. Martin Hiesemann. 
Witherby & Co., London, 1911. 



INDEX 

Animals mentioned in Text: 

Antelope 38, 86, 87, 114, 115, 142, 143, 152, 166, 204 

Bear 4, 38, 86, 87, 115, 116, 117, 148, 194 

punished for stealing 117 

Black 11, 39, 76, 116, 144 

Grizzly 11, 39, 114, 116, 117, 144-146, 148, 154 

Beaver 76, 114, 194, 207 

Bison, see Buffalo. 

Buck, Indian black 18 

Buffalo or Bison, 

6, 8, 10, 11, 38, 40, 76, 77, 85, 86, 87, 141, 204, 207 

Caribou 8, 89 

Cougar, see Mountain Lion. 

Coyote 143, 148, 152 

Deer, 6, 86, 87, 89, 90, 102-115, 133, 142, 143, 144, 155, 194, 

197, 198, 202, 204, 205, 207, 209, 215, 220, 221, 222 

damage done by 106, 107 

stocking with 105, 106, 120, 121 

value of as food 102-113 

David's of Manchuria 11 

Mule 15, 38, 40, 115, 207 

Roe 205 

White-tailed, 

11, 33, 76, 78, 86, 87, 105-108, 113, 132, 204, 208, 217, 218 
Elk, 6, 10, 11, 39, 76, 87, 102, 104, 114, 115, 136, 137, 144, 155, 

197, 205, 222 

surplus of females 136 

Fox 3, 4, 22, 118, 199, 220 

Red 118, 147, 157 

Franklin spermophiles 143 

Fruit-bat or Flying fox 100, 101 

Fur seal 171 

Hare 205, 215 

Lynx 3, 4, 22, 76, 146, 220 



232 INDEX 

Mink 146 

Mongoose, a menace 100, 101, 156, 158-160 

Moose 38, 39, 89, 91, 108, 114, 166 

Mountain Goat 39, 152, 166 

Mountain Lion or Puma or Cougar, 11, 39, 76, 143, 148, 152-155 

Mountain Sheep 15, 38, 39, 40, 41, 114, 115, 144, 146, 152 

Opossum 146 

Otter 76, 194 

Prairie-dog 143 

Puma, see Mountain Lion. 

Rabbit 3, 100, 114, 131, 146, 155-157, 194, 197, 215 

Raccoon 146 

Sable 194 

Sea-lion, mistakenly treated as a pest 125-127 

Sheep, Wild 215 

Skunk 3, 146, 194, 220 

Squirrel, Gray 114, 115, 134 

Red 134, 139, 220 

Stoat 156, 214 

Wapiti 204, 207 

Weasel 146, 147, 156, 214, 220 

Wild boar 204 

Wolf, Gray or "Timber" . . .3, 11, 22, 40, 76, 140-143, 148, 152-155 

Wolverine 11, 155 

Birds mentioned in Text; 

Auk, Great 12 

Avocet 64, 67, 68 

Bittern 138 

Blackbird 32, 57, 58, 129 

Crow 56 

Bluebird 58, 158 

Bobolink 17, 134, 135, 150, 185, 194 

Bob-white, see Quail. 

Brant 95 

Bunting 58 

Bush-tit 58 

Cardinal 58 

Catbird 54 

Chickadees 58, 60, 118, 213 



INDEX 233 

Condor 140 

Cormorant, Pallas 12 

Crane 15 

Indian saras 18 

Sandhill 15 

Whooping llj 15 

Creepers 58, 60 

Crow 129-131, 320 

Curlew 63-65 

Eskimo 12, 65, 70 

Long-billed 67 

Dodo 75, 166 

Dove 17, 100 

Dowitcher 63-65, 67 

Duck, 6, 21, 27, 32, 33, 55, 87, 90, 95, 113, 115, 129, 130, 151, 

209, 216, 220 

Black 33, 197, 218 

Labrador 12 

Mallard 33, 197, 198, 206, 209, 215-221 

Wood 27, 209, 215, 217 

Eagle 131, 140 

Golden 152 

Egret 22, 23, 55 

rookery robbed 189 

Flamingo 22, 23 

Fly-catchers 57, 58 

Goatsucker 55, 57 

Godwit 67 

Goldfinch 150 

Goose 6, 21, 33, 87, 95, 216, 222 

Canada 197, 198, 210, 217-219 

Hutchins 218 

Snow 218 

Wing-tipped cackling 218 

Goshawk, American 150 

Grackle, Purple 129 

Grosbeak 58 

Rose-breasted 4 



234 INDEX 

Grouse, 6, 12-16, 55, 70, 71, 75-78, 94, 96-99, 101, 113, 119, 

143, 147, 151, 159, 206, 207, 220, 221 
Eastern pinnated, or Heath-hen, the eastern Prairie- 
Chicken, nearly extinct. Lesson involved, 11-15, 32, 

75-78, 87, 96, 101, 147, 151, 159, 206, 207, 220, 221 
Eastern ruifed, miscalled "pheasant," 78, 79, 96, 115, 118, 

149, 151, 194, 205, 207, 209, 219, 221 

Indian sand 18 

Sage 15, 77, 96 

Sharp-tailed 15, 77 

Gull 22, 23 

Hawk 3, 5, 22, 55, 79-82, 123, 131, 140, 153, 199 

Chicken 81 

Cooper's 149, 150, 220 

Duck, or Peregrine Falcon 150 

Pigeon 148, 150 

Red-shouldered 81 

Red-tailed 81 

Sharp-shinned 148, 220 

Sparrow 148, 150 

Heath-hen, or eastern Prairie-Chicken, see Grouse, Eastern 
Pinnated. 

Heron 22, 23, 55, 137, 138 

Ibis 22, 23, 55 

Jay 58, 214 

Blue, destroyer of brown-tail moth 128, 129 

Kingbird 58 

Kingfisher 138 

Kinglet 58 

Macaw, Cuban tricolor 12 

Gosse's 12 

Purple Guadaloupe 12 

Martin 17, 57, 61, 62 

Purple 158 

Meadow-Lark 56, 57 

Nighthawk 17, 57, 61 

Nuthatches 58, 60, 118 



INDEX 235 

Oriole 57, 58 

Baltimore 56 

Owls 3, 5, 22, 79-82, 131 

Barn 80 

Barred 151, 152 

Great Horned 151, 152, 220 

Long-eared 81, 151 

Saw-whet 152 

Screech 152 

Short-eared 81, 151 

Parrakeet, Carolina 11, 12, 76 

Partridges 215, 221 

European gray 202 

Hungarian, a failure 14, 98, 101, 119, 197 

Red-legged 202 

Peacock 215 

Pelican 138 

Phalaropes 64, 67 

"Pheasant," see Grouse, Eastern RuflFed. 

Pheasant raising 33, 99, 219 

Pheasant 78, 149, 206, 209, 211, 215, 219, 220 

English 101, 146, 202 

Golden 197 

Japanese 101 

Ring-necked 98, 197, 198, 206, 207, 209, 217, 219, 221 

Silver 197 

Phoebe bird 54 

Pigeon 149, 151, 215 

Passenger 11, 12, 76 

Plover 32, 63-68 

Black-bellied or beetle-head 64 

Black-breasted 66 

Golden 65, 66, 70 

Killdeer 57, 63, 67, 68 

Mountain 67 

Semi-palraated 67 

Upland 11, 67, 68 

Prairie-chicken or Heath-hen, see Grouse, Eastern Pinnated. 



236 INDEX 

Ptarmigan 15, 89, 101, 151 

Quail or Bob-white, 14, 15, 21, 32, 55, 57, 68, 70-76, 87, 94, 
96-99, 101, 113, 114, 118, 119, 139, 143, 147, 149, 151, 
159, 165, 197, 198, 203, 207, 209, 220, 221 

Gambel's, increasing 94, 95 

Hungarian 198 

Mexican 197 

Valley 95, 197 

Rice-bird, see Bobolink. 

Robin 17, 58, 128, 135, 194 

Sandpipers 64-69 

Spotted 69 

Shore-birds 15, 16, 26, 55, 62-70, 94 

Species left open to slaughter 65, 66 

Snipe 32, 63-65, 67, 69, 87, 215, 921 

Song birds 55, 57, 114, 222 

prey to larger birds 148-151 

Sparrows 57, 58, 194 

prey to larger birds 150-152 

English 157 

Spoonbill 22, 23 

Starling 157, 158 

Stilt 67 

Swallows 17, 26, 55, 57, 58 

Swan 15 

Swifts 55, 150 

Teal 221 

Tern 22, 23 

Thrush 54, 128, 135, 150, 213 

Titlark 57 

Towhee 58 

Tree-climbers 55 

Turkey 6, 15, 76, 87, 89, 96, 97, 101, 159, 194, 197, 198, 209 

Turnstone 67 

Upland Game-birds 70-79, 94-99, 101, 147, 151 

Vireos 54, 150 

Warblers 54, 55, 58 

Water-fowl 83, 95 



INDEX 237 

Woodcock 63-65, 67-69, 87, 215 

Woodpeckers 5, Q6, 58-61, 118, 149, 158 

Downy 60 

Golden-winged 158 

Hairy 60 

Pileated H. 76 

Wren 57 

Yellow-legs 65, 66, 67 

Abundance of wild life 3, 7, 166, 221 

Animal pests, 

80-82, 123, 131-134, 140, 143, 144, 146-148, 152-160, 220, 222 
treatment of, 

124, 125, 127, 128, 132-134, 142-147, 153-155, 160, 222 

Balance of Animate Nature 3-8, 82, 222 

Bayne law 33, 42, 180, 206 

Bird pests 80, 82, 139, 140, 148-153, 157, 158 

Birds of special value as destroyers of insects 55 

Destroyers of brown-tail moth 129 

Destroyers of codling-moth 57, 58 

Destroyers of cotton-boll weevil 5^, 57, 62 

Martins and swallows 61, 62 

Shore-birds 62-70 

Tree-climbers 58-61 

Upland game-birds 70-79 

California's game law excellent 169 

Upheld by citizens and University 37, 171 

Causes of destruction of wild life 6, 110, 111, 122, 211, 222 

Cherry trees planted for birds 130 

Commercial aspect of breeding game, 

103-108, 111, 202, 206, 209, 216, 219, 220, 221 

Contempt for law 188-191 

Damage to property by beasts or birds 106, 107, 124, 128-134 

Dangers in game-breeding 199, 213 

Dependence upon those who do not kill for helping the cause, 

35, 36, 111, 164, 165, 167-180, 182-185, 191-194 



238 INDEX 

Destructive species of birds 80-82, 148-153, 220 

treatment of 149-153 

Duty toward wild life, v, vi, 1-3, 36-38, 42, 43, 98, 161-168, 170- 

172, 183-185, 191-193, 201, 211, 212 
Economic value of wild life, 1, 2, 7, 17, 44-47, 53-62, 64-68, 71-74, 

79-83, 85, 86, 97, 128-131, 194, 209, 211, 221, 222 
Enemies of wild life, 33, 37, 41, 42, 47, 61, 62, 66, 84, 94, 168-170, 

178-180, 182, 183, 185, 188-193, 211, 213 
Evidence of damage to be insisted upon, 

125, 127, 128, 139, 140, 148, 160 

Extermination of species in wild state 11, 12, 23, 92 

absolute 11, 12, 23, 38, 41, 42, 65, 161 

threatened 16, 76, 77, 78 

Extinction, local 11, 16, 62, 63, 75-78, 105, 161 

practical 11, 64-66, 76, 98, 110 

Feather millinery trade ..22-24, 33-35, 43, 137, 139, 140, 170, 173, 180 
Federal Migratory Bird (McLean- Weeks) law, 

16, 24-31, 44-46, 61, 62, 65, 70, 78, 95, 179, 180, 209 

declared unconstitutional 29-31 

supported in the South 28, 29 

Fight to save wild life by University of California 37, 171 

Fish destruction 137, 138 

"Fool hawk law," The 5, 81, 82, 153 

Forests 102, 103 

Conservation of 101, 129, 166, 174, 175, 187, 188, 201 

Dangers to 45-51, 160, 175 

Raising of deer in 102-105 

Game-birds 87, 88 

Laws protecting 25, 26, 44, 74 

Game laws 89 

Enforcement of 109, 167 

ineffectual 20-23, 40, 41, 75, 76, 110, 167-169, 188, 189 

Game protection, Reasons advanced against ....69, 74, 119, 120, 139 

Game, Sale of 24, 31-33, 75, 95-97, 168, 169, 172, 206, 219 

Hobhouse bill in England 34 

Hunting licenses 19, 20, 108, 192 

Inbreeding 120-122 

Insect pests 2-5, 45-61, 66-68, 73, 81 



INDEX 239 

Insectivorous birds, economic value of, see economic value of 
wild life. 

destruction of 16, 46 

laws protecting 25, 26, 44, 65 

methods of preventing damage by 130, 131 

International treaty with Canada 27 

Introduction of foreign species of birds and animals, 

98-101, 120, 121, 131, 155-159 

Iowa game warden's mistake 74, 99 

Italians and negroes destructive of bird life, 16, 46, 61, 134, 194, 211 

Lacey bird law 180 

Lambay, Island of, stocked with deer 121 

Legitimate sport and use of game, 

90-92, 95, 103, 104, 106-108, 155, 206, 219, 221 

Limit to possibilities of restocking 9, 13-15, 188 

Long close seasons and immunity from slaughter indispensable, 

99, 117, 118, 137, 170 

Losses due to insects 49-53, 194, 209 

Maine, Conservation of deer and moose in 108, 109 

Manual of instruction needed 220 

Market hunters 21, 22, 32, 44, 77, 88, 97, 98, 172 

Record kept by a professional 32 

Mauritius, Island of 75, 166 

McLean-Weeks law, see Federal Migratory Bird law. 

Measures needed for preserving species, 13-15, 38, 88, 92-101, 

111, 112, 117-119, 122-124, 165, 169, 170, 198, 211, 212, 220-222 

Campaigning for, and legal steps 173-180, 186 

Funds needed for 36, 38, 177, 180-187 

Immediate action imperative 167, 169, 175, 186, 188 

National Forests made national game preserves 179, 193 

National Forests, Hunting permitted in 40-43, 179, 193 

New York's solution of the deer problem 132, 133 

State law excellent 96, 133, 219 

New Zealand stocked with deer 120, 121 

Ohio and other states nearly denuded of wild life ..11, 15, 74-77, 164 

Species of birds exterminated in 76 

Permanent Wild Life Protection Fund 209 



240 INDEX 

Practicability of saving existing remnants of wild life, 

23, 38, 42, 43, 83, 98, 99, 101, 111-114, 117, 119, 120, 122, 170 
Preserves, established, 12, 23, 24, 38-40, 85, 97, 115-117, 120, 121, 

167, 175, 181, 189, 197, 198, 209, 210 

Marsh Island, La 181 

Rockefeller Foundation Purchase 210 

especially needed 70, 199-201, 207, 222 

Private 198, 201-213, 217-219 

Author's 217-219 

How to establish 214, 215, 220 

Response of wild life to protection, 

99, 101, 104-106, 113-117, 121, 213, 216, 217 
Reward of efforts to save wild life, 23, 24, 32-37, 65, 70, 85, 96, 

117, 170, 171, 173, 176, 179-182, 185, 186, 197, 198, 217-220 

Rodents, etc., destroyed by birds 5, 79-82, 123, 131, 194 

Russian mulberry trees planted for birds 130, 131 

Slaughter for food and commercial purposes, legalized but un- 
warrantable, 9, 10, 15-23, 32, 41, 42, 44, 57, 61, 62, 66, 69, 
74-80, 85-89, 94, 96-98, 109, 110, 119, 135, 161-164, 179, 
191, 192 

illegal but permitted 188, 189 

Sources of information 172, 220, 223-229 

States and areas remiss in treatment of wild life, 

15, 20, 27, 28, 41, 42, 74-80, 96, 164, 189 

Stomachs of birds examined 67, 149 

sea-lions examined 127 

Trout 205 

Vermin 214, 215, 220 

Vermont's solution of the deer problem 105-107, 133 

Vertebrate life. Species of, exterminated 11, 12, 23, 65 

Wastefulness in treatment of bird question 4, 96, 97 

Characteristic of American spirit 18, 187 

Weapons and automobiles in hunting 15, 21, 24, 74, 76 

Weeds kept down by birds 71-73, 97, 135, 194 



H 1 88 "4 




"-^^ 



* 



^ 4^ % • 




/,.^;^^"°o y..^^;\ /^'^m^y- ^' 












iCx/.'^s^-rv^^- ^ 




























? '^^ 







*Q • h. 










\..^" ,•!«»'« -^^..^^ :^' '^^.cf y^ 



